…or Andy Warhol does the Boston skyline. From the MIT news office:
Getting an energy audit of a home or a commercial building can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. But new techniques and technology developed by a team of MIT researchers have streamlined the process, allowing for scans of large groups of buildings — or even entire cities.
The project uses a vehicle with automated cameras that take thermal infrared images of every building as it moves along, similar to the way Google Street View vehicles obtain visual imagery. Researcher Long Phan and Research Scientist Jonathan Jesneck, working with Professor Sanjay Sarma, developed the system, which they have used over the last few months to scan the entire city of Cambridge and an army installation (Fort Drum in New York). The team, from MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering Field Intelligence Laboratory, presented a summary of their work so far at the MIT Energy Conference on March 5.
The idea is to quickly identify the buildings that are most inefficient, by detecting the heat escaping through walls, roofs, doors and windows in a way that allows detailed, quantitative comparisons of the rate of heat loss. That will make it possible to target remediation efforts at the worst buildings, thereby getting the most out of any efficiency-improvement spending.
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