Deploying Analytics At Penn State University
This is part of our ‘Extraordinary People, Everyday Data’ series, where we showcase the ingenuity of building experts using data to shape the built environment.
Looking to Explore your Data like Cory? Connect with us.
The Pennsylvania State University
In Series 1, Cory Rideout, Facilities Automation Systems Specialist at Penn State, shares his journey from coder and cybersecurity enthusiast to developing impactful analytical software for his university’s facilities team. Cory hopes his experience will help others looking to combine their interest in programming with their facility and controls knowledge.
Certainly, most everyone in the US is familiar with the great Penn State University. It may not be as well known however, that globally, the Nittany Lions boast one of the world’s largest university footprints. The university spans 24 campuses with its facilities serving a myriad of simple to highly complex purposes. The university serves nearly 90,000 students, 30,000 teaching and administrative staff as well as the thousands of families and residents that visit or live near its campuses.
🤯 Before We Start
We rate this as a 2/5 on a technical level — Cory lays out key software packages and programming languages that are integral to designing and deploying his analysis software. We do not expect building automation professionals to know these tools, hence why we are sharing them today. In a future post and video, we will dive into the nuts and bolts of how to setup these tools to easily analyze and visualize your data at scale.
The target reader for this article is someone who has read so far and says, “I am a building automation specialist or smart building enthusiast and I am looking for how I or my team can use all this data across our buildings too. Tell me, magic computer tutorial man, how can I get started?” Well, that’s exactly what Cory is going to do. Let’s get on with it!
🚀 Cory’s Software Toolkit
“With these tools, I find that the possibilities for data analysis and uncovering new insights are virtually limitless.”
Despite being new to data analytics and APIs, Cory successfully integrated data from 25 buildings, totaling more than 2.5 million square feet, 7,000 individual pieces of equipment and well over 100,000 individual sensors.
Cory employed a strategic mix of software and the Python programming language played a pivotal role:
- Onboard Python SDK and AI modeling assistant for automatically labeling data in Project Haystack & Google's DBO
- Streamlit for crafting a custom web app
- Matplotlib for data visualization using Python
- Plotly for eye-catching, interactive, and highly quality visualizations
- Python libraries Pandas and NumPy, which make structuring data and handling complex calculations a breeze
👑 Use-Cases & Stakeholders
“At the end of the day, it’s not just about producing data, it’s about making sure the right insights reach the right people in the most effective way.”
A cornerstone of Cory’s software development is communicating with stakeholders to steer his analysis towards solving the most important organizational objectives.
Cory first incorporated ASHRAE-prescribed rules for analyzing building energy and performance to establish a baseline analysis. Then, Cory considered key questions on how best to qualify and quantify his analyses, for example:
- What is the financial impact of system failures?
- How do we determine the damage to critical spaces?
- How do we visualize the cost impact of our diagnostics?
✌️What's Next
“I absolutely love good questions…They push me forward.”
Cory’s software is making an impact and his contributions at Penn State are laying the groundwork for larger data-driven initiatives. He and his team are establishing a digital foundation for more sophisticated algorithms, including AI, which will significantly enhance decision-making processes at the enterprise level.
At its core, Cory’s work is about more than just coding and crunching numbers. Cory has a relentless curiosity about how things work, and how things can be improved, both in the technical and human dimensions of the building automation industry.
“You can spend an entire career specializing in just one sub-area, but everything is interconnected. Understanding BACnet, for example, means understanding TCP/IP networking. One topic always leads to another.”
Cory continues to let his curiosity guide him rather than follow a predetermined path. We will check back in with Cory again soon to share a deeper walk-through on his data analysis and storytelling journey.
👏Shoutouts!
Cory is thankful for the invaluable support from his colleague, Matt Dermond, a Direct Digital Control Specialist at Penn State, whose guidance and collaboration played a key role in refining his approach and overcoming technical challenges. Cory also gives a Special Thanks to Jonathan Kay, Facility Automation Senior Manager, and Shawn Zimmerman, Systems Administrator. Their contributions were instrumental in moving this project forward and his work would not have been successful without their support.
👉Connect With Cory
