Page 245 - Handbook of Electronic Assistive Technology

234 HANDBOOK OF ELECTRONIC ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

Hereward College

Hereward College have been implementing cabled infrastructure smart house systems
for a number of years. Hereward College is a further education college based in Coventry
that has specialist facilities to cater for students with impairments on a residential or day-
only basis. Since 2001 Hereward College have been incorporating KNX-based technology
within their residential blocks on an assessed need basis, with funding from the Learning
and Skills Council. They have 24 KNX-enabled rooms.

Manchester Methodist Housing Association
In 1999 the Manchester Methodist Housing Association, in collaboration with Bolton
Council, undertook two smart house projects as part of a regeneration project. They were
Lever Edge Lane, which consisted of eight flats and four bungalows, and Hope Mill, which
consisted of 18 flats and bungalows. The projects were implemented with IHC (Echelon)
infrastructure, with an emphasis on safety and security, including sensors (PIRs, smoke detec-
tion, water leak detection, water usage, night activity and front door) and actuators (heating,
lighting, emergency access and emergency distress light). The system could be programmed
to dial different telephone numbers depending on the alert, but the system was not linked
into the dispersed alarm system, which was standalone. There was also a video entry system
linked to the television and there were specific programmes for ‘exit mode’, automatic occu-
pancy simulation when unoccupied in the evening and energy-saving heating management.
Unfortunately, the projects were not that successful, as it appears that the tenants
chosen were in general not appropriate, and the use of the accommodations had not been
thoroughly considered. There is no record of what happened to the technology within
these developments.
The projects just described were all based on either KNX or LonWorks infrastructures.
A number of systems based on proprietary technology were developed in the United
Kingdom and there is one that is worthy of discussion here, as it was developed specifically
for independent living situations and was utilised in a number of projects.
Millennium Homes Project
The Millennium Homes Project was led by Professor Heinz Wolf, Brunel University, and
was funded by a joint The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)/
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Foresight grant to develop caring technology
for the elderly. The underlying ethos was that technology could be used to monitor indi-
viduals in a quasistable state, to support them in performing daily tasks and identify when
they might begin to struggle to cope (Perry et al., 2004).
One of the underlying principles of the system was to use cheap, easily available, off-
the-shelf sensors. The system had various alarm states with different priorities and it
accounted for factors such as time of day, resident activity and location and urgency of the
situation, and then selected the appropriate mode of communication. The time allowed
between communication attempts, and the number of communication attempts before
an external alert call was sent, was set on an individual basis (Dowdall and Perry, 2001).