Keio Research Institute at SFC

* This laboratory has been completed.

Objectives and overview of research activities
The Smart Living Environment Developer Consortium is an alliance that comprehensively researches and develops technology to produce smart communities that utilize ICT to realize health management, medical services, sustainable energy utilization, and so forth within a next-generation housing life environment. The aim of this consortium is to present the feasibility and meaning of this work in the real world by utilizing evolving information technology.
One of the main reasons for this research is the huge social expectation that the rapid application of IoT within the housing life environment will be integrated into smart technology, thus creating a sustainable community that protects the health and safety of its residents. In other words, the objective is to improve housing life quality by acquiring real-time data covering the behavior of the residents and the environmental conditions, and developing a system that can intelligently process such data. To this end, a technology solution that reduces energy consumption and environmental load, without causing deterioration of the living environment, is required. It is desired that such technology is in tune with the functions designed for the housing life environment to maintain and improve health, as well as the safety and security functions with regards to disasters.
As one of the most basic human activities, housing life includes a range of issues, and the direction of such smart housing life environments cuts across many sectors. However, each of these elements within technological development is linked from the perspective of the next-generation lifestyle and there is a common thread of research based on the acquisition of concrete data and social appeal. A number of sub-projects will cover various key issues within the main consortium. This format was chosen in order to drive cooperative research, which will ultimately lead to high-level social impact. Enabling these sub-projects to share the experimental development environment and to mutually access data acquired from the same experimental environment as much as possible will drive efficient research and promote exchanges of opinion on each other’s research outcomes and the transmission of information.
“Keio Co-evolution House Operation Test and Research Consortium” and “Kanagawa ME-BYO House Laboratory Project”, which were implemented until FY2016, were constructively reorganized, and “SFC Open Energy Society Project” and “Smart Homecare Project” were newly integrated to form this consortium.

1. 1. SFC Open Energy Society Project

Development of DC power supply technology in which electric power supply and consumption will be decentralized within the community and energy can be freely exchanged and shared. SFC will become the stage for demonstration experiments.

1. 1. Keio Co-evolution House Project

Development of a smart housing model aiming to reduce environmental burden, promote health, and realize comprehensive safety and security

1. 1. ME-BYO House Laboratory Project

Development of technology that aims to manage health and utilize health information in everyday life with the home as the hub

1. 1. Smart Homecare Project

Development of technology to enable homecare that fuses medicine and IT to provide the benefits of some hospital functions outside of a hospital by linking the home and hospital via the internet

The common thread is to pursue a method whereby 1) real energy utilization, the effects of environmental control, changes in behavior, the physical conditions of the users, and so forth are measured under natural climate conditions, 2) to acquire and analyze large amounts of data on various environments and behaviors within situations that are close to the real-life housing life environment, and 3) to conduct trial experiments of a system that reacts in real time. The basic method of research will be to bring together insights generated via the acquisition and accumulation of large amounts of diverse and mutually accessible data not usually possible with other commonly used methods.
This consortium will collaborate with public institutions, such as Kanagawa Prefecture and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, regarding the research commissioned by such institutions. While these entities do not pay to be part of the consortium, they will participate as special members. Cooperation with these entities is planned in the area of maintaining the operation of a common experimental foundation.

Researchers, managers and professors