Today, their new 3,129-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 5-bath residence serves as a prime example of what’s possible when it comes to building fire-resilient structures. The couple achieved this with the help of architect Andrew Wilt, who designed the luxurious home, and Alliance Green Builders, who constructed it.

According to the home’s official website, “the homeowners, architect, and builders made fire-resistance a top priority incorporated into the architecture and material selection.” Fire-resistant construction materials, including stucco and concrete walls, metal roofing, high-impact windows, and stone and tile ground cover serve to make “Casa Águila” even more resilient.

The single-story ranch-style property, completed in 2016, is named after the golden eagles that soar through the surrounding hills, marking the first house in the entire county to be certified by the Passive House Institute US. Passive home design is a building standard that takes factors like energy efficiency, comfort, affordability, and ecological concerns into consideration — all of which are especially important in Southern California, where drought is ongoing and wildfires cause power outages that can last for days.

Fire-Resistant Architecture

The home’s shell is both energy-efficient and fire-resistant. This one-two punch was achieved with help from the Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Home program (ZERH). The wood framing within was treated with borate, a naturally-occuring compound that is commonly used to protect wood from termites, though it also prevents combustion while suppressing smolder.

Additionally, the interior walls and ceilings were fitted with sheets of plastic containing bio-based, phase-changing gel packets, which themselves offer an energy-efficient way to stabilize interior temperatures. More specifically, the gel within them “phases,” cooling the home when it melts and warming it back up when it solidifies.

“Bulletproof” Windows and Doors

You might think that a building’s exterior would be the first thing to catch during a wildfire, but because Southern California’s fierce Santa Ana winds are capable of lifting up debris and breaking windows, embers can actually spark up inside of homes, too. For that reason, Casa Águila has been equipped with Passive House-rated, German-manufactured Unilux windows and doors. The glass on these windows is tempered and protected by a laminated “bulletproof” outer layer, the likes of which should be able to withstand rocks and other wind-blown debris.

Self-Sufficient Means Natural-Disaster-Ready

Casa Águila’s average annual savings compared to that of a standard new home (due primarily to energy efficiency) is $11,700. All California DOE ZERHs are evaluated using the California Energy Design Rating (EDR), and this home received an incredibly low EDR of -92.

A 360-square-foot solar thermal collection system on the roof provides the home with radiant floor heat and hot water. With climate change in mind, two backup systems have been put in place to provide air and water heating and cooling. Builder Jeff Adams explains: “the system has been designed for a climate that could be dramatically different in 100 years or more.”

Drought-resilience and water self-sufficiency were achieved using five 10,000-gallon rainwater-collection tanks. Four more 10,000-gallon tanks collect storm water, while a fifth additional tank collects graywater from the washing machine, sinks, and showers. This water is filtered and reserved for irrigation and fire-suppression purposes. Blackwater from the kitchen sink and toilets is released into a septic tank before being aerated, filtered, and pumped into a final 1,000-gallon tank (also for irrigation use).

474 square feet of photovoltaic panels have been employed for electricity, each of them maximizing efficiency even on the rare cloudy days. The hill above Casa Águila is the site of the home’s other energy-collector, a helical, 45-foot-tall, 3.2-kW wind turbine. In total, the residence runs off of twenty twelve-volt solar batteries and can generate power for over twelve hours a day.

In 2016, the home gained LEED Platinum status and won the 2017 Department of Energy’s Housing Innovation Award. The homeowners continue to innovate and educate their community through home tours and workshops.

The post Casa Águila: A Resilient, Self-Sufficient Solution to Wildfires first appeared on Dornob.

Michael Zeto, AT&T’s Vice President and General Manager of Smart Cities, explains: “We’re exploring possibilities with the City of LA to create a technology-first environment that can improve experiences for residents and visitors across the community. We’re looking to help the city improve problems like traffic congestion and public safety.”

European cities were some of the earliest adopters of smart city technology, though US cities are starting to come around. In many of these places, sensors used in Internet of Things (IoT) devices already connect components across municipal infrastructures to gather data. LA hopes to make that data more user-friendly in the future by providing residents and visitors with mobile apps to help them do things like avoid traffic jams, find street parking, and report overflowing dumpsters.

“Access to information is the foundation of equality, opportunity, and prosperity,” says Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “We are establishing unique partnerships as we deploy new networks and technologies across LA — and we’re excited to be discussing with AT&T how to empower Angelenos with new tools that could make their lives easier and our communities stronger.”

Other solutions being explored range from digital kiosks and infrastructure to structural monitoring. A key point is that this plan aims to benefit the disenfranchised neighborhoods that are traditionally left off the list when it comes to municipal improvements.

5G Network and Small Cell Technology

According to CTIA, “A small-cell installation consists of small radio equipment and antennas that can be placed on structures such as streetlights, the sides of buildings, or poles. They are about the size of a pizza box and are essential for transmitting data to and from a wireless device.” This technology is vital to creating a 5G network, which will supposedly be up to 100 times faster than the current 4G network.

To make LA “smart,” the city needs to rapidly install a great number of small cells and begin deployment of a 5G network. More than 222 petabytes of data run through our global network as is, so it’s safe to say that a truly smart city would not be possible without without 5G.

In October of 2018, Los Angeles partnered with Verizon to test an initial 5G rollout. Lampposts throughout downtown were wired with small cell technology and fiber optic cables. Of course, that array won’t really do anyone good until early 2019, when Samsung and Verizon are expected to release the world’s first-ever 5G smartphones. This means that 5G will be a competition between carriers as early as next year. Driven by competition, experts predict that 5G will be available in most major cities, if not globally, by the start of 2020.

The post LA to Become One of the Smartest Cities in America first appeared on Dornob.

In hopes of alleviating some of this devastation, former MythBuster Jamie Hyneman has recently designed and built a brand new kind of driverless vehicle: a firefighting tank fitted with massive water containers that can be piloted remotely to roll directly into flames.

The Tank

The idea for the remote-controlled, self-cooling, fireproof tank first came to Hyneman in 2003, when he was hired to build a soda-vending robot for a 7Up commercial. More specifically, he engineered a vending machine on tank treads that rolled up to people and aggressively shot cans of 7Up at them. Those tank treads made him think “surface area” and eventually turned his attention to fires. His next idea was that the treads would be continually doused with water as the tank rolled over the flames. That engineering began with a M548 tracked cargo carrier that Hyneman bought in 2017, which, at 14,500 pounds, is still light enough to be relocated via airlift.

The Funding

By 2015, Hyneman was working on a prototype. Financial backing came in 2016, when he met Palmer Luckey at a venture capitalist’s picnic. Luckey is the founder both of Oculus VR, which he sold in 2014 for $2.3 billion to Facebook, and Anduril Industries, an innovative outlet for defense contract projects that apply virtual reality. To prep the tank for Anduril’s technology, Hyneman brought on Jim Newton — an advisor on MythBusters who went on to found the TechShop maker spaces — to devise, program, and build a network of necessary sensors and microcontrollers.

“Sentry,” which Hyneman’s team finished building in late August 2018, towers about 12 feet tall, boasting a highly-reflective aluminum surface and two five-hundred-gallon water tanks. Professional-grade water monitors are able to raise, lower, pivot, and empty the tanks in under five minutes. A tailored heat-resistant suit that Hyneman calls “fire jammies” blankets the whole vehicle.

The Rainstorm

“When you have instead of a truck a tank and instead of a driver a remote pilot, you can charge through the wall of flames,” says Luckey. “You can crush smoldering debris like tinfoil.” That may sound like an awesome vision, but solving the problem of fireproofing a tank filled with wiring, servopneumatic valves, batteries, sensors, and pumps requires even more new solutions.

Cue the incorporation of a rainstorm inside the tank. A 50/50 coolant mix of glycerin and water sprays down the entire interior continually, draining down into a bilge and transferring its heat to the thousand gallons of water in the tanks. It can then be pumped back up and continually reused. of course, the tank is also meant to carry people. “If you go in here to get rescued,” Hyneman says, “you come out like you’ve been in a spa.”

In late September 2018, Sentry arrived at Anduril HQ in Orange County, California, to work out the VR kinks and begin field tests. According to Luckey, Sentry will eventually drive autonomously using Anduril’s Lattice AI sensor networks. Remote operation will make full use of VR, with sensors streaming views of the area to firefighters’ headsets and smartphones.

Hyneman remains cautiously optimistic about the project, stating: “It’s conceivable that [Sentry] would be autonomous at some point, but then it’s conceivable we’ll have people on Mars before long, and that AI is going to do us all in. That may well happen but not right now. The fires are right now, and remote control is right now.”

The post MythBuster Jamie Hyneman Builds a Driverless Wildfire Tank first appeared on Dornob.

For example, a Nest smart thermostat can be turned on with a smartphone and alert a homeowner that her HVAC system’s air filter needs to be replaced — and she has access to all of this information whether she’s on the couch or halfway around the world on vacation.

The following three trends promise to increase the value of IoT in our increasingly smart homes:

Artificial Intelligence and User Experience

Think of artificial intelligence (AI) as the brain behind IoT devices. Most people use voice assistants like Siri or Alexa to send a text or play music, but as AI evolves, it looks like those assistants will become increasingly integral to the way we interact with our homes. “In the early days, you could do IoT in your home in a lot of different ways and there were a lot of wires and a lot of hard-code — mobile apps came later, but it was still an isolated experience that [didn’t] really feel connected,” says Bret Greenstein, VP of IBM’s Watson IoT Consumer Business.

AI has already added value to everyday objects like home appliances. At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Whirlpool revealed a lineup of appliances that could be controlled using Google Assistant or Alexa. Imagine a washing machine that allowed you to check the amount of time left in a wash cycle just by asking it.

As AI’s potential continue to grow in 2019, designers will be spending a lot of time thinking about user experience (UX). After all, the way we interact with Alexa is profoundly different from the ways we interface with other technologies. There’s no screen or keyboard, for starters, and there are still many commands that fail to produce their desired results. As designers work out basic UX kinks in AI, they will be helping the IoT run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Smaller, Cheaper Sensors

IoT hinges on digital sensors, which today are all around us. A single smartphone uses around 15 of them to measure environmental attributes like location, orientation, and proximity. Most cars even have sensors that monitor tire pressure, triggering a dashboard light to come on whenever the level dips below a certain threshold.

Making the leap from tires to plumbing, one could begin to imagine a sensor that alerted homeowners of avoidable and irritating problems like minor leaks. Further efficiency could be achieved if these sensors sent out an automated message to a local plumber whenever they detected a problem.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the value of the IoT sensors market is expected to reach $38.41 billion by 2022. Now that miniaturized, inexpensive, wireless sensors are readily available to people, IoT consumer electronics will become both more common and more useful. Many experts believe that the 5G network, which looks to be coming soon to urban centers around the world, is the key to providing the power to move all that information.

Mobile Access to IoT Apps

Until 2018, when access to IoT networks from mobile devices became more feasible, it was primarily desktop applications that connected users to the IoT. Mobile access is expected to increase and accelerate in 2019, meaning more IoT-derived data will be available to more people.

Here too, the 5G network will be key. Verizon released the world’s first commercial 5G service in September 2018, rolling it out in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. There are currently over 2.6 billion smartphone users in the world, and this figure will likely increase considerably in the next five years. Since mobile apps are inexpensive to develop and their use is more popular, more efficient, and more flexible than that of web apps, using them to remotely control IoT gadgets seems like a no-brainer.

The question of how to effectively make use of that data, however, is the real problem to watch out for.

The post Top 3 Internet of Things Trends for 2019 first appeared on Dornob.

Here are a few of the gadgets you can expect to see flying off the shelves this December:

TVs

Even though 96 percent of Americans already own at least one, TV is CTA’s number one holiday tech gift. As TV technology continues to evolve so drastically year after year, most of us are upgrading to the newest models far before our original sets stop working.

While most of us are watching high-definition TVs with a pixel resolution of 1920 x 1080, the new category of 4K Ultra HD TVs have display resolutions of 3840 x 2160. The catch is that the broadcast quality of most visual content is only just beginning to catch up with the technology.

Laptops

For years it’s been Dell versus MacBook in the laptop arena. Now, there’s a new contender in town: the Huawei MateBook X Pro. It’s showing up as a surprise knockout on many of this year’s “Top Gifts” lists. According to TechRadar, “Huawei has delivered the most luxurious, speedy, and long-lasting laptop we’ve seen since the Dell XPS 13.” And at $1,499.99, the laptop is “a veritable bargain next to the most expensive 13-inch MacBook Pro configuration, [which] costs $2,299.”

Smartphones and Tablets

Turns out that smartphones are more complicated gadgets to gift than TVs, laptops, or tablets — mostly because they don’t function without a service plan. Oftentimes you can’t even complete a purchase without one. On top of that, many people are extremely loyal to their carriers. Some even get downright emotional about this, especially if they’ve had negative experiences with a particular carrier in the past. For that reason, you’ll want to be sure to pick out a phone that works with the recipient’s carrier of choice. With all of the fine print in cell phone contracts, you’ll also have to be careful to avoid making a choice that ends up costing your loved one money further down the road.

Smartwatches

The watch remains one of the most popular and accessible tech wearables on the global market. Apple, not surprisingly, continues to reign supreme here. Fitbit is also holding steady since the 2018 launch of Versa, which has more features than the basic fitness band. Still, an increasing number of people are considering the Chinese brands Xiaomi and Huawei, both of which focus on markets outside of China.

Desktop Computers and Any Type of Camera (Tied)

Interestingly enough, a lot of millennials are taking up photography, whether they’re experimenting with vintage film cameras or just looking to something outside their smartphone lens. Also, if you’ve spent any time with children lately, you’ll know that YouTube videos are becoming more popular with them than regular old TV shows. If you know an aspiring YouTube star, MusicCritic.com suggests that “The Canon EOS Rebel T6 Digital SLR Camera for YouTube is a pretty amazing camera for both taking pictures and video recording.”

The post Top 5 Tech Gifts for the 2018 Holidays first appeared on Dornob.

Yes, the foam — which is similar in composition to the fire retardant used in handheld fire extinguishers — has been significantly improved since it was invented in 1902. And the axe that we see the firefighters carrying, dubbed “Pulaski,” was updated with an elongated handle after an ergonomic study helped its designers better understand how to reduce fatigue. Still, significantly newer technologies like satellite imaging have yet to be implemented successfully.

There are a few reasons that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) seems so slow to introduce truly sophisticated technology. For starters, planning requires extensive collaboration between members of Congress, forest management, and eye witnesses on the ground. Congressional-level efforts to allocate more money to technology are already underway, as more money is consumed by the increasing severity of the state’s wildfires. Ralph Gonzales, the Fire and Aviation Portfolio Manager at the U.S. Forest Service’s Technology and Development program in San Dimas, California, also explains that the state doesn’t “want to introduce unintended consequences.”

So while many elements found in the following technologies are not brand new, what is new is the concept of bundling them together for use in firefighting, with a focus on early detection, mapping, and improved helicopter performance.

FUEGO: Early Detection of Wildfires from Space

FUEGO is a collaboration between UC Berkeley (led by Carl Pennypacker, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence National Berkeley Laboratory) and Fireball, a Reno-based company headed by CEO Tim Ball, who himself boasts almost a decade of firefighting experience and a doctorate from Stanford.

The project’s crowdfunding page reads: “Using modern digital technology, FUEGO [Fire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous Orbit] will utilize platforms at various altitudes to detect wildland fires very early, measure wildland fires with high precision and specificity, and then feed such results into modern fire simulation programs.” While the system is still being developed, the team envisions something along the lines of geosynchronous satellites and aerial drones integrated with existing piloted aircraft and fire towers. Sensors and infrared cameras would aid in spotting wildfires before they became too difficult to control.

Currently, wildfires are most commonly reported by witnesses on the ground, and less often by airplanes or weather satellites. Pennypacker says that the usual half-hour response time could be cut down to two minutes or less with FUEGO. Before that can happen, however, funding will have to be procured for the up-to $300 million satellite needed for the system. The team has even started entertaining the idea of a partnership with the US Defense Department, which already uses similar satellites.

Collector: A Geographic Information System Mapping App

Collector is an app developed by Esri, a company that specializes in information management. With a user-friendly interface that takes advantage of the built-in GPS hardware we all have on our smartphones and tablets, the app allows firefighters to download maps and work offline. As soon as they have cell service, their data is uploaded. They are then able to see a fire’s size and location, as well as any structures and roads in its vicinity.

Collector runs off the GIS (Geographic Information System): a multi-layered approach that efficiently stores and analyzes spatial data. The system allows firefighters to measure the acreage of affected areas, share photos, get directions, and track containment progress.

The hope here is that GIS tools like Collector could eventually replace radio communication for both aircraft and ground crews. Lisa Elenz, the Assistant Director of Capabilities, Development, and Integration for the Forest Service’s Fire and Aviation Management Division, explained: “We’re trying to expand our ability to access information off-aircraft, download it while they’re still in the air, store it, and make it searchable for analysis and documentation. We want to improve situational awareness so we have better information for line officers, decision makers, and crews on the ground.” Cal Fire has been using the app since 2014 to help map wildfire damage.

Black Hawk “Firehawk” Helicopters Carry More Firefighters and Water

In the summer of 2018, the City of San Diego’s Fire-Rescue Department received an S-70 Black Hawk helicopter from the Lockheed Martin company Sikorsky. LA County Fire Department has also started replacing their aging, Vietnam-era “Super Huey” helicopters with Black Hawks.

San Diego Fire-Rescue Air Operations Chief Chuck Macfarland states: “Never before has the City of San Diego operated as large and as powerful a helicopter as the Black Hawk, which can accurately place almost three times more water on a wildland fire in a single drop than our current fleet. By hitting wildland fires aggressively in their initial stage, we will be able to keep fires small.” The Black Hawk, now dubbed the Firehawk, can carry up to 11 firefighters and all of their gear. The aircraft boasts an 1,000-gallon (8,000-pound) belly tank, extended landing gear and rescue hoist, and a retractable snorkel. In comparison, the existing fleet of Super Huey helicopters can carry just eight firefighters and about 360 gallons of water or foam. Among other functions, the aircraft’s digital cockpit allows for precision hover, and its digital moving map is able to pinpoint precise location and destination. It’s easy to see why adoption of this particular technology is so attractive to fire departments.

“We’ve got a new dynamic in the landscape,” says Edward Struzik, author of Firestorm: How Wildfires Will Shape Our Future. “We’ve got heat drying up the forests, extending droughts, providing more fuel for ignition. The heat drives winds like the Santa Anas even harder than in the past.” The Forest Service currently has 80 people doing research and development, much of which focuses on the incorporation of new technologies. Here’s hoping these innovative measures provide at least a little relief to the increasing intensity of California’s wildfires.

The post New Technology in the Works to Fight Wildfires first appeared on Dornob.

When CoreTrust Capital Partners purchased the property at 444 South Flower Street in 2016 (now better known as the Citigroup Center), the building was 25 percent empty and nearly 40 years old. The 48-story, 891,056-square-foot International Style office tower was originally designed by architect AC Martin and completed in 1981. CoreTrust’s Managing Principal John Sischo explained his firm’s renovation goals in a 2017 Commercial Property Executive article, stating: “millennials want to be removed from an obligation to use a car, and what we see in most of our office buildings is that tenants are looking for an alternative to their home.”

To do this, they teamed up with Gensler, widely recognized as the world’s leading collaborative design firm, and Haworth, which custom designs and manufactures furniture and other products for “adaptable workspaces.” Haworth had anticipated the resurgence of DTLA back in 2014, when they decided to move their own showroom there from Santa Monica.

Flash forward to 2018, and the Workplace Innovation Lab, just one aspect of the massive $50 million renovation, is born. The team “hacked” the sixth floor to create the 22,000-square-foot lab, which features an assortment of different workstations and office layouts. Prospective tenants are ushered in by brokers so they can envision their own businesses in the building. CoreTrust and a few other companies use the floor for their offices but leave it open for tours.

The improvements to the floor are both major and subtle. The showstopper is a 1,000-square-foot open-air terrace: a communal space that welcomes both fresh air and urban noise into the entire area. A bold move, it was created by removing the hermetically-sealed “curtain wall” on the building’s west and south faces.

As for the engineering and design challenges the team faced during the renovation, “there were many.” In a recent KCRW interview, CoreTrust’s other Managing Principal Thomas Ricci revealed that “there were structural considerations to deal with in terms of not only removing the curtain wall, but also incorporating new, movable walls [into the] interior that effectively, at the end of the day, become the curtain wall. They’re just now inside the space and no longer on the outside of the building.”

The Innovation Lab’s interior spaces have been given treatments that are less pronounced but still impactful. To combat the issue of invasive noise commonly found in open-plan offices, Haworth created a group of sound-proof pods. Another solution called “Habit Soundscape” comes from the company Plantronics. It consists of eleven zones, each equipped with four speakers a microphone that “listens” to ambient sound levels. These mics use algorithms that allow for real-time modulation of the volume playing through all the speakers on the floor.

Plantronics has also decided that employees need visuals, so they’ve rigged a few video screens to show running streams and babbling brooks all throughout the office. Of course, real-life nature is always better than a recording of it, so the team also took the liberty of installing a waterfall that runs down the side of one wall. On top of all that, Australian company Air Aroma blessed the lab with “Seaside,” a coastal scent that ties the whole sensory tableaux together.

Despite the fact that there is so much aging office space around the world, it remains to be seen which of these solutions will become commonplace. We look forward to seeing which new companies will make the leap downtown to 444 South Flower Street.

The post Workplace Innovation Lab Hacks Aging LA Building to Attract Young Companies first appeared on Dornob.