Climate AI Innovation Lab v3.0

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🎉 CONGRATULATIONS 🎉

# AI INNOVATION GRANT AWARDED

Your climate investigation caught the City Council's attention. Now they want to tackle the city's built environment — the homes, offices, and public buildings that account for roughly 40% of energy use in most cities. That's where AI can make the biggest difference:

Buildings & Energy Innovation Grant
$500,000

Use AI to find the most energy-wasteful buildings in the city — before anyone has to inspect them by hand.

🏢 Your city has a problem it can't solve alone. Buildings are wasting massive energy — but nobody knows which ones.

## 🔍 Step 1: The Inspector's Dilemma

Before we design an AI solution, let's understand why we need one.

Here are your city's buildings. Which ones are wasting energy?

The city needs to find its biggest energy wasters, but most buildings have never been assessed. Right now, there's no quick way to tell an efficient building from a wasteful one.

### What if we sent inspectors?

12,000 buildings ÷ 10 inspectors = ~1 year

Assuming each inspector rates 5 buildings per day

### While we wait, every year…

0
families overpaying on energy
0
tonnes CO₂ wasted
0
cars' worth of pollution

But first, you need to teach it what to look for.

## 🧬 Step 2: Teach Your AI System What to Look For

To predict which buildings waste energy without visiting them, your AI system needs specific data inputs. In AI, these inputs are called "features" — think of them as clues that help the AI make predictions.

Select the 3 best clues for predicting building energy use:

📏 Floor Area

Total building size in square metres

Bigger buildings use more energy — size is a key clue!
⛅ Weather Data

How hot or cold it gets where the building is

Cold winters mean more heating; hot summers mean more cooling!
⛰️ Elevation

Altitude above sea level

Interesting idea, but elevation matters much less than the other clues.
👤 Owner's Name

Person or company who owns the building

A name doesn't tell us anything about energy use!
🏗️ Number of Floors

How many stories tall the building is

Taller doesn't mean less efficient — a 2-story building and a 20-story building can have the same energy use per square metre. Floor area already captures size better.
📅 Year Built

When the building was constructed

Older buildings often have poor insulation and outdated heating and cooling systems!

## 📊 Step 3: Define the Energy Score

Should your AI system compare buildings by total energy used, or energy per square metre?

What Should Your AI System Predict?
⚡
Total energy used

How much energy the whole building uses

📊
Energy per square metre (EUI)

Energy score that accounts for building size

### Which building wastes more energy per square metre? Pick one.

Round 1
☕
Coffee Shop
Uses 500,000 energy units/yr
Size: 186 m²
EUI 250 — wasteful!
VS
🏭
Warehouse
Uses 3,000,000 energy units/yr
Size: 9,290 m²
EUI 30 — efficient!
Round 2
🏫
1960s School
Uses 1,500,000 energy units/yr
Size: 929 m²
EUI 150 — wasteful!
VS
🏢
Office Tower
Uses 8,000,000 energy units/yr
Size: 18,580 m²
EUI 40 — efficient!

That's the power of EUI

Energy Used ÷ Building Size = EUI

High EUI = wasteful — the building burns through a lot of energy for its size.
Low EUI = efficient — the building makes good use of every square metre.

Without this score, a big warehouse always looks worse than a tiny shop — even when the shop wastes 8× more per square metre. Your AI system will use EUI to spot the real energy wasters.

## 🗄️ Step 4: Find the Data

Now that you've designed your AI system, you need data that matches your plan — enough real building records for it to learn patterns.

We'll search a public database of real building energy records from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

## Almost Done — Quick Check

#### Your AI System Design

🎓 Answer both to unlock your results:

1

Why can't cities just send inspectors to every building?

2

What does EUI measure?

🏆

## AI Data Plan Complete!

Great work! You've designed the data strategy for your building efficiency AI.

🔍
Investigation
✓ Complete
→
🧬
Data Design
✓ Complete
Features: Floor Area, Weather, Year Built
→
🤖
AI Training
Up Next
Activity 3

📦 NEXT: You'll learn how AI actually learns from data — then build your own model and compete on a live leaderboard.

PROCEED TO ACTIVITY 3 →

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