16. Cyber-Physical Social Systems for Facility Management

Cyber-physical systems comprise of physical systems and their corresponding cyber systems that are tightly integrated at all levels and scales. Cyber-physical systems offer opportunities for improving efficiency, monitoring, controllability, and reliability of constructed facilities. These constructed facilities systems are used and maintained by human beings in the social and natural environments. To fully realize the benefits of cyber-physical systems, the social aspect needs to be considered. Necessary mechanisms need to be put in place for accommodating the “human in the loop.” The control of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in a sharable space is a key example, as individual occupants seek to achieve what they perceive to be their own comfort level, which is often not aligned with what benefits the entire occupants at a given point in time. Addressing facility management from the cyber, physical and social perspectives constitute the cyber-physical-social system, a complex system, and challengeable problems to control and manage it under traditional methods. This chapter presents a framework for the application of cyber-physical social systems in facility management. It describes the role of social systems in the facility management process and advocates the inclusion of social systems in the current and future cyber-physical facility management systems. The chapter describes deployment scenarios to show the potential benefits of cyber-physical social systems in facility management. The authors also present challenges to achieving cyber-physical social systems in facility management.