Contactless and context-aware decision making for automated building access systems

ABSTRACT

In the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, contactless solutions are becoming increasingly important to making buildings more resilient to the spread of infectious diseases in complementing social distancing and disinfection procedures for disease prevention. The presented study focuses on contactless technology and its role beyond automated interaction with the built environment by examining how it expedited space use and could improve compliance with sanitary norms. We introduce a conceptual framework for the intelligent operation of automated doors in an educational facility, enabled by the network of sensory devices and the application of computational techniques. Our research indicates how versatile data gathered by RFID systems, in conjunction with data extracted from occupancy schedules and sanitary protocols, can be used to enable the intelligent and context-aware application of disease prevention measures. In conclusion, we discuss the benefits of the proposed concept and its role beyond the need for social distancing after the pandemic. © 2021 and published by the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong.