LIVING LAB’ - The future is happening now
The University of Pécs has launched a series of lectures entitled "The future is happening now" which gives an opportunity for faculties to present their research areas and directions. On March 4th, the Faculty of Engineering and Informatics presented the current research portfolio.
In his presentation on "Sustainable built environment—cities, buildings, people", Dr. András Reith, the senior research fellow of the UP FEIT, said that tools, platforms, and solutions are available to measure architecture's impact on the environment. In connection to building energy use, he highlighted that cooling is not needed for the buildings but for the people using them.
„...the building structure below and above the ground as the most significant part of the building should be preserved for a long time because it accounts for more than half of the total carbon load of the whole building. So it should be considered to build a new, renovate or reuse buildings." - the expert concluded.
Dr. Ágnes Borsos, Full Professor of UP FEIT gave a presentation entitled "At the border of creation and sciene - research of parametrized comfort in interior spaces". The professor highlighted that according to WHO surveys, people spend 90% of their time in enclosed spaces. Shockingly, Manhattan, as a 60 km² island has three times larger indoor space. Based on the United Nations estimates the total indoor space worldwide will be approximately double in the next 40 years. It means that by 2060, the area of the newly created indoor spaces will be equivalent to the total floor area of Japan year by year. In this context, the professor highlighted the comfort map they created helps not only to improve comfort but also to optimize energy use.
"According to our instrumental measurements, the basic comfort parameters - thermal comfort, air quality, light, and noise levels - show significant differences in certain parts of the space. We scaled these data and assigned these characteristics to each workstation. In this way, we have created the opportunity for workers to choose a workstation based on their comfort preferences."
In the presentation entitled "Increasing Resilience to Cyber Attacks", the lecturer Gábor Gyurák, Head of the Department of Cybersecurity and Networks, said that in connection with the use of the Internet, the applications used by ordinary people are only the tip of the iceberg, since all major systems, from the electricity supply, water supply to transport, are nowadays operated with the help of IT and the Internet. The demand for cybersecurity has increased with digitalization, and because of this, the education, research, development of cybersecurity have become strategically required. The lecturer shared the outstanding international successes of their CyberLAB.
