Aerial Thermal Imaging for Parts of Calgary

[I-Hate-Hulse]

A very cool website put out by researchers at the UofC: (for parts of NW / SW Calgary anyways)

Calgarians may have barely stirred in their sleep one spring night in 2012 as a small-engine plane flew back and forth over the city’s neighbourhoods at low altitude.

A team of researchers at the University of Calgary used the images and city data to create a web-based map that shows potential greenhouse gas emissions for entire suburbs and pinpoints hot spots in each individual home where waste energy is escaping.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...052/story.html

Very cool - you can click on your house and see the imaging for it:



My house wasn't scanned, but I'm curious to hear if other CP'ers here have had their house scanned and if it correlates to known leaks in their house (coughranchlandsellingcough....)

Here's the interesting part:

Homes in older neighbourhoods like Dalhousie and Brentwood score relatively well compared to those in some newer subdivisions like Patterson and Westgate.

Part of that difference may reflect the fact that the heat loss index weights for the larger living areas and stricter building code in effect at the time those subdivisions were developed, but Hay said it may also point to the fact that some new homes are not as well built as they’re billed.

“The results give me pause because my home is one of those,” he said.

“It’s cold and my heating bills are high, despite the fact that I invested a lot in buying something that I thought was energy efficient.”

So if your house was built in the 70's it apparently stands a better chance of being built better than your typical house built int the 80s or 90s.

Some comments on the Herald article question the time of the flight - the issue whether solar load could have influenced the results but I'm going to assume they've taken that into consideration when they timed the flight.

Site is here: http://www.saveheat.co

[jayswin]

I'm pretty sure I made a post a year ago after coming home late one night, asking if there's any reason a small aircraft would be flying low on the south end of the city. That was probably it.

[Northendzone]

Be easy to find the grow ops

[bc-chris]

i heard a 'rumour' that the rcmp helicopter uses similar technology to look for "hot" houses in kelowna... with those hot houses being possible grow ops.... or just poorly insulated!

i guess they could at categorize hot houses as places of interest?!?

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

i heard a 'rumour' that the rcmp helicopter uses similar technology to look for "hot" houses in kelowna... with those hot houses being possible grow ops.... or just poorly insulated!

i guess they could at categorize hot houses as places of interest?!?

Would make sense. We know Hawks has this technology, though I've only heard it used for chasing suspects. They'd probably have to start observing the house before they could have probable grounds to search them, but it would give them an idea on where to start.

EDIT: Pretty neat, to bad the city isn't finished yet. From the little I browsed it seems like the older communities were the most efficient interestingly enough. Though I would chalk it up to those people having less, and using less.

[Bigtime]

Very interesting, really hope they can get the rest of the city done. I'd love to see my place. Checked out our old house in Hawkwood, and it actually did surprisingly well (31 and built in 1987).

Just like how we've seen Walkscore added to MLS listings, is something like this yet another piece of info that buyers will come to expect?

[Jedi Ninja]

The thermal imaging is cool, but the scores do not pass the sniff test. The old, poorly insulated homes in Bowness have the highest scores, while the newer homes in Cougar/Aspen etc. rate poorly. The scores correlate almost perfectly with ground elevation, perhaps there is something they need to account for in terms of either background temperature levels (being warmer down low) or something to do with the elevation of the aircraft versus ground elevation.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja

The thermal imaging is cool, but the scores do not pass the sniff test. The old, poorly insulated homes in Bowness have the highest scores, while the newer homes in Cougar/Aspen etc. rate poorly. The scores correlate almost perfectly with ground elevation, perhaps there is something they need to account for in terms of either background temperature levels (being warmer down low) or something to do with the elevation of the aircraft versus ground elevation.

Part of that difference may reflect the fact that the heat loss index weights for the larger living areas and stricter building code in effect at the time those subdivisions were developed, but Hay said it may also point to the fact that some new homes are not as well built as they’re billed.

I think the above is key. The scores aren't being directly compared to each other but from that statement it appears that if two house one built in the 1930s and one built in the 2000 emit the same amount of heat the one built in 1930 will have a better score. I would rather see raw data in terms of watts / squate foot or watts per property.

The scores you are seeing are predicable given the above as an 1930's house would get credit for insulating the roof whereas the 2000 house alread has its roof insulated.

I think I need to read more into the methodology of computing the score. This is one of my pet peaves with "SCORES". Why not just give data and let people do their own comparison.

EDIT: It does look like they give you data when you drill down to the actual house. Very disappointed that a brief outline of methodology is not found on their website. Now I have to read the 3 papers they linked.

[psicodude]

Yeah, something is fishy here. Take a look at the majority of the newer homes and the thermal image looks almost identical: Massive heat loss along one side of the house or from the attached garage. I wonder if it's because the newer homes have their furnace vented out the side?

[rotten42]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

i heard a 'rumour' that the rcmp helicopter uses similar technology to look for "hot" houses in kelowna... with those hot houses being possible grow ops.... or just poorly insulated!

i guess they could at categorize hot houses as places of interest?!?

Yes the RCMP have employed the technology before. My friend's brother-in-law owns one of the thermo cameras and was done contract work with the RCMP on rural locations in the past. I can’t remember the exact location but a while back they found a huge grow op that was constructed under a barn using that technology.

[Mass_nerder]

Ha! My geography prof. is the guy behind this project. I get to hear a lot about it in class. It's actually a really neat idea, but from what I understand, there's still plenty of work to do.
They just won some big MIT competition with this project.

[endeavor]

My brother is involved in this project. Some excellent work they're doing.

[killer_carlson]

Am I using the website wrong? I can't get any data outside of that box.

[psicodude]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

Am I using the website wrong? I can't get any data outside of that box.

There is no data outside of that box, yet. They plan on expanding it in the future, but were only able to do those neighbourhoods.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

i heard a 'rumour' that the rcmp helicopter uses similar technology to look for "hot" houses in kelowna... with those hot houses being possible grow ops.... or just poorly insulated!

i guess they could at categorize hot houses as places of interest?!?

I thought the CPS did this was well.

I am sure I saw a story about a few years ago.

[yads]

My house is on there and while being better than my neighbors, it scored pretty low (high) on their Heat Number.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by Mass_nerder

Ha! My geography prof. is the guy behind this project. I get to hear a lot about it in class. It's actually a really neat idea, but from what I understand, there's still plenty of work to do.
They just won some big MIT competition with this project.

The thing is, the energy efficiency of individual homes could very easily and accurately be calculated using data from utility companies, i.e. natural gas bills. No need for rocket science.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by psicodude

Yeah, something is fishy here. Take a look at the majority of the newer homes and the thermal image looks almost identical: Massive heat loss along one side of the house or from the attached garage. I wonder if it's because the newer homes have their furnace vented out the side?

It seemed like a lot of homes had hot spots along their south and west walls (the sunny sides), but it wasn't consistent.

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja

The scores correlate almost perfectly with ground elevation,

Weird I noticed almost the same thing this morning. Looking at my old stomping grounds in Edgemont bottom of the hill is dark blue, as you move up the hill it transitions into lighter blue then the top of the hill is orange. I guess it's possible it's a coincidence and I assume when they saw the results they'd have looked into it, but it certainly seems like there might be a methodology fail hidden in there. Of course it's also interesting the map cuts off at the top and doesn't show the backside of the hill which would have been more interesting as it would have shown different elevations built at roughly the same time with the same builders and spec designs.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by Dan02

Weird I noticed almost the same thing this morning. Looking at my old stomping grounds in Edgemont bottom of the hill is dark blue, as you move up the hill it transitions into lighter blue then the top of the hill is orange. I guess it's possible it's a coincidence and I assume when they saw the results they'd have looked into it, but it certainly seems like there might be a methodology fail hidden in there. Of course it's also interesting the map cuts off at the top and doesn't show the backside of the hill which would have been more interesting as it would have shown different elevations built at roughly the same time with the same builders and spec designs.

Isn't most of the stuff in Edgemont that's at the bottom of the hill (closest to John Laurie) from the late 80's? The crazy boom of the 80's &90's is what built the "orangy" bits of the Edgemont heat map.

I can attest to Hawkwood - most of that was built boom time 80's yet large swaths of it in the east are blue.

Some neat stuff the guys are doing, but I think they're going to have to prove to the public that solar load / altitude isn't having a negative effect. (like an episode of Mythbusters) It just doesn't pass the smell test.