The future of the built environment
Rishee Jain is an engineer and an expert in the built environment – the manmade structures of modern life.
The future, Jain says, will be a place where everyone has a safe, comfortable place to live and work, and the built environment adapts in real time to our needs. Jain is now exploring cool roofs that reflect heat to lower indoor temperatures and improve occupants’ well-being. We once believed that humans bent infrastructure to our needs, but now we understand how infrastructure changes us, too, Jain tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. I thought it would be good to revisit the original intent of this show. In twenty17, when we started, we wanted to create a forum to dive into and discuss the motivations and the research that my colleagues do across the campus in science, technology, engineering, medicine, and other topics. Stanford University and all universities, for the most part have a long history of doing important work that impacts the world, and it's a joy to share with you how this work is motivated by humans who are working hard to create a better future for everybody. In that spirit, I hope you will walk away from every episode with a deeper understanding of the work that's in progress here, and that you'll share it with your friends, family, neighbors, coworkers as well.
[00:00:48] Rishee Jain: Traditionally, engineers have thought as our buildings and our infrastructure as simply, there's a bunch of people here. They need water, they need energy. Let's build a pipe. Let's build some electrical cables. They need a place to live. Let's build some buildings. That was how we did things twenty-five, thirty years ago, and I think what I shifted now is, uh, you know, a more nuanced understanding of how people use spaces, what do they actually need, and how we can respond as infrastructure.
[00:01:22] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. If you enjoy The Future of Everything, please hit follow in whatever app you're listening to right now. It'll guarantee that you never miss the future of anything. Today, Rishee Jain will tell us that although we do design the buildings in which we live and work, they also affect our behavior. He and his colleagues are coming up with ways to dynamically change those environments, so they adapt to our activities and our preferences. It's the future of the built environment. We have a new segment that we're introducing today at The Future of Everything called Future in a Minute. At the end of this segment, after I'm done talking to the guest about their work, I'm gonna ask them a few questions and ask them for rapid fire responses that they will respond to, and we'll present it in our new segment, which as I said is called Future in a Minute. Before we get started, please remember to follow the podcast in whatever app you're listening to, so you never miss the future of anything, and you're alerted to every episode.
[00:02:29] So when you think about the built environment, you think about buildings, sidewalks, parks, gardens, infrastructure, like the pipes that bring us water, take away waste, electricity, internet. But you know, there's been changes in how we design environments. Uh, in the old days, we just built a building, put it up, waited for thirty years until it was out of commission, took it down, built another one. There's now a new generation of civil and environmental engineer that's thinking about how can we make these buildings more sustainable? How can we have them adapt to our new ways of working? A lot of us work at home. We go to work, and we just borrow some space for a while. When you're in that space, how do you make sure the temperature's a good temperature?
[00:03:12] How do you make sure that the lighting is right for you? How do you make sure you engage in healthy behaviors at work? Get up, walk around. All those things are something that a clever architect and a smart engineer can design and build to make these buildings better and last longer. Well, Rishee Jain is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and he's an expert at the interaction and intersection between buildings and social systems. He's gonna tell us that you can expect buildings of the future to be much more responsive to your needs, much more flexible, and hopefully more comfortable.
[00:03:50] Rishee, what made you decide to focus on the built urban environment and ways to improve it as the focus of your professional research life?
[00:04:00] Rishee Jain: Well, thanks, Russ for having me on the show. First and foremost, uh, you know, for me it was really about, uh, being able to touch and feel, uh, what I work on every day. And so, I remember, you know, for me, I used to help my dad around the house, a bunch of things, doing, doing home projects and, uh, building things. And that's what got me interested in understanding how we shape our built environment and buildings. Then as I sort of progressed in my educational career, I realized that this is something, um, that I can design, build, engineer, and then actually get to touch, um, and actually see the end product. And I think that's, that's hard to do in some, some modern technologies when they've especially gone more digital. Um, of course I do a lot of stuff on the digital domain, but eventually, hopefully, it gets built. And we get to touch and feel it.
[00:04:51] Russ Altman: That's great. And so, um, on your, um, on your, like on your web pages and in your writings you talk about, um, this is not just about technical engineering stuff, there's also a social aspect and people might be very surprised that somebody who's thinking about how to build buildings is thinking about the social side of that. So, what is the social side of the urban built environment?
[00:05:13] Rishee Jain: So, I, I think that's, you know, a, a great point. I think traditionally engineers have thought as our buildings and our infrastructure as simply, there's a bunch of people here, they need water, they need energy. Let's build a pipe, let's build some electrical cables. They need a place to live. Let's build some buildings. That was how we did things twenty-five, thirty years ago. And I think what has shifted now is, uh, you know, a more nuanced understanding of how people use spaces, what do they actually need, and how we can respond as infrastructure. So, I like to give this example of, you know, traditionally it was just, you know, there was some demand. People needed some infrastructure. We built it, we scoped the size, and we built it, and that was it. Now we're sort of in this new, uh, I would say, era of infrastructure where we can dynamically match supply and demand. Now, I'll give you an example of that. How we use, uh, energy or electricity can change dramatically, you know, in the day.
[00:06:08] Um, you know, I'm not a morning riser. My wife is, so she, you know, her coffee gets made two hours before mine. Mine comes a little bit later. Uh, you know, my five-year old's running around in between and using, uh, various things. And so that, the way we live our life and the social dimension of our interactions frame and, and are embedded in our engineering decisions. Uh, another quick example is, you know, I think COVID, uh, the COVID pandemic and the work from home really taught us to value our in-person interactions. So, a lot of work we've been doing is understanding how people move in building spaces, how we can design collaborative environments that are also sustainable. So, you know, you're not, uh, double heating and cooling if people are working from home and also cooling office spaces and how you understand and maximize that potential. So that's really what informs and was really drove me to embed this social dimension in how we design and, and build buildings.
[00:07:03] Russ Altman: You've also, uh, talked about and written how, although we design, you and, and your colleagues, design buildings using these kinds of considerations. Once the building exists, it also shapes the behavior of the people who are using the building. Uh, and, and, and I wanna, I, I wanna ask you about that because of course that's true, right? It makes sense that the building I'm in is going to put constraints on what I can do during my day, but I'm, I have a feeling that we haven't thought, I think you have, but many of the rest of us haven't thought about the ways that the design decisions of the buildings we are living and working in are actually changing things like our health and our attitudes towards the world.
[00:07:46] Rishee Jain: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, I think this is an also a sort of a new shift in the way engineers are approaching things. Before we simply thought, we shape our infrastructure, is how I like to put it. Now, I think there's an understanding that our infrastructure shapes us too. And the reason that's important is, you know, there's been lots of studies done by some of my colleagues that under, trying to understand your exposure to nature, you know, what is the value of having that window and seeing a tree outside, um, in terms of as you go throughout your day. Um, and it has been demonstrated to have huge impacts on productivity, wellbeing, metrics, overall satisfaction and happiness. These are the type of things that, that are, are changing.
[00:08:29] You know, uh, a common example that's, that's sort of given, uh, you know, in the literature is if you've, if you don't have sidewalks, people won't walk. If you don't feel safe to walk down the street and you're, you know, worried about that, you won't walk. This is also the case of bike lanes and these sort of things. So, we have to start thinking about when we design our infrastructure that we're not just designing for the next three to five years, but how do we build in some flexibility? What does the future look like? How do we think about how future inhabitants can help shape the infrastructure, 'cause it will inevitably shape that. And so, I think that's gonna shift. Previously we said we're gonna build something. It's gonna stand for thirty years and we're gonna tear it down and build something new. I think that that sort of mode of thinking has evolved.
[00:09:11] Russ Altman: So that, this is great. And, and so one more kind of just preliminary, uh, almost like a definition, is when I look at your papers that you've written and the talks you've given, you sometimes use the phrase urban form. It appears in a lot of the titles of your papers. What do you mean by urban form? And this, I think a related question is what is the unit that you think about? Do you think about a single building, or do you think about a neighborhood or an entire city as you're doing your work? I think it would be helpful to understand what the scope is that you're considering. 'Cause for example, you just mentioned, you know, uh, pedestrian sidewalks and bike lanes. That's outside of a building, so I'm, that makes me guess that you're thinking beyond the building. So, talk to me about that.
[00:09:54] Rishee Jain: That, that's a great question, uh, Russ. So urban form, uh, what we mean by that is, you know, the type and where buildings are laid out in the city. In addition to that, where you put green spaces, where you put roads, you could think of this as the layout. You know, if you were the Sim City designer and you are plopping things in your little virtual world, that's what we're talking about the urban form. And so, my work actually sort of spans all these dimensions. We tend to think of things where we call intra-building dynamics. What, what happens within a building? How people are moving, how they're consuming energy.
[00:10:30] Then zoom up a little bit of what happens in the neighborhood, uh, you know, and then finally, you know, zooming all the way back out, what happens in a big city, across a city like San Francisco or the Bay Area as a whole. And I think what's interesting is making the connections between these scales. That's where a lot of the innovation has happened. Because you know, as what you are doing within your building, as you zoom up to your neighborhood has an impact. And as you zoom up to your city has an impact, especially as you aggregate these choices, uh, and this behavior, so.
[00:10:58] Russ Altman: So, so that's great. And, but it raises a kind of, maybe a logistical question is, that means you have to get a lot of people on board for this, for this activity, right? If you are looking at a single building project, there's, you know, if somebody owns the land, they want to build a building, boom, okay, we have all the deciders in the room. If you're looking at a neighborhood or two owners, or five owners or twenty owners. So, um, is the world set up to, um, implement your vision given these kinda real-world constraints.
[00:11:27] Rishee Jain: So, I think that's a, you know, that's a, that is a huge challenge. And I think what we often do is, uh, the decision maker and stakeholders are different at each scale. So, if I'm thinking at the urban scale, it's often policy makers, people aren't making land use decisions. What, and what, and where you can build this, how high you can build this. So, they're dictating those rules. They're not dictating down to the design of a window. But inevitably that big design decision floats down to the neighborhood where people are making decisions about where you're gonna place parks. If you're gonna, uh, allow a bike lane to be in a certain neighborhood or in a certain throughway. Are you gonna enable parking? These sort of things are in the neighborhood.
[00:12:07] And then finally at the building scale, where you have, you know, the, the owner and operator of the building, they're accounting for those and making decisions based on that, on how they design. Uh, the architect's gonna design based on sort of what their, those are, the engineer's gonna design based on that. So, they kind of fit together. While the stakeholders are different, they are inherently, um, sort of linked at the hip, if I, I could say so. And so, you have to take into account these different, different levers that sort of occur on each different scale. It also makes it difficult 'cause as you can imagine, changing policy is very different than convincing one building owner. But we tend to see innovations happen both top down and bottom up. Uh, if, you know, we, you know, the bottom-up approach is you see a new building being built or something, you know, being adopted, and folks say, well, we want that amenity too.
[00:12:57] Or we, you know, that's huge, and that, that's helpful. You see a new neighborhood park in, in, uh, in your friend's neighborhood, you may say, Hey, why don't we have bike lanes in a park like that? Then when it gets to the, you know, the city scale, it eventually floats up. Then you have the, you have to move the opposite direction. We have a directive or a change in policy. Um, you know, a big debate right now is the reforms to CEQA, which for, uh, folks that don't know is the big environmental build that helps, uh, or I would say, um, dictates where and how you can build and the environmental, uh, review that's necessary for building housing in California. So, changes in that are a big top-down approach in which that would shift, uh, you know, all the way down to the system.
[00:13:38] Russ Altman: Great. Okay, so we've, now we've set it up. We know what we're talking about. I'm, I'm very excited. One of the things that you work on is, uh, you talk about and work on dynamic infrastructure and, and you've already said that in the olden days, uh, uh, you know, it was kind of static. It's like, let's make a plan, let's build it. Hopefully we'll get thirty years out of it and then we get, then we get a chance to redo it. Um, but you have a very different model, and I wonder if you can flesh out what it, what it means to have a dynamic infrastructure because it kind of makes my brain explode, 'cause I guess I'm an old guy, and I'm just thinking about buildings and sidewalks. It's like, what can be dynamic? But I think you have thought about ways to make this dynamic.
[00:14:17] Rishee Jain: Yeah. So, you know, I'll give you an example, um, you know, at the building scale and then maybe at, at the urban scale. Um, so at the building scale, as we've seen this shift from return to, uh, after the pandemic of everybody working from home to more hybrid work, we've actually been able to explore and understand how different spaces can be utilized in different ways. Um, you know, often you had offices, conference room, those were sort of very stagnant, uh, places where people either work by themselves or work together.
[00:14:48] Now we have this, you know, dynamic, uh, dimension of hot spotting where people will come in and sign into a desk. Um, then they often will, you know, camp out in a certain coworking space or, uh, you know, have meetings in the conference room. What we can see now is that we can understand where people are using these spaces and then dynamically shift things around. You know, um, this allows us to shut down heating and cooling in certain parts of the building that are no longer being used, when before we would heat and cool the entire building. So that's kind of what we mean by dynamic is respond.
[00:15:19] Russ Altman: I, I was gonna say, what are the other levers? So, um, I love the example of the, uh, the thermostat because, uh, anybody who's been in office, office likely has either been part of or witnessed thermostat wars, between the people who are running warm and the people who are running. And then, and, and if you can solve that thank you. Um, are there other, and what are the other levers that you can, um, kind of turn to, uh, uh, modify an environment on the fly?
[00:15:45] Rishee Jain: Yeah, so, you know, I think the two big levers that people interact with are thermal, which is, as you said, the thermostat, the comfort. The other thing is lighting. Um, and so things that have been really, you know, clever and cool and dynamic is you can have dynamic shading so you can turn the space that was previously really hard to work on a computer with, 'cause of glare, into a work friendly environment by dropping shades or tinting the windows dynamically to encourage people to shift to that space. You can also turn on different types of lighting. We now understand that different types of lighting encourage different types of work. You know, um, uh, lighting that mimics the sun is really great for concentrated work.
[00:16:27] Uh, lighting that mimics sort of, uh, you know, more, less daylight and is lower on the Kelvin scale is more for casual work and these sort of things, maybe mingling. So, these are the sort of levers we're starting to think about at the building scale. But let me take you to the other side, uh, where the time and spatial, you know, dimensions change. So, a big, uh, sort of, you know, thing that's been happening. Um, I live in San Francisco and so I've been experiencing this, but I give you an example, is the city has turned to turning many of the city streets into night markets in which they shut it down to vehicular traffic once a month. And there's various different themes. In which now these become pedestrian friendly plazas in which people can now use them in a very different fashion.
[00:17:12] And you see this with farmer's markets and various different things. That is a way that the infrastructure's responding. It's often hard to rip up streets, but as soon as you shut down traffic, now this becomes a very different place for gathering than it was previously when you were constrained to the sidewalks. So, these are the type of things we're thinking about. When you do these things, there's also downstream effects, right? Uh, the impact it can have on traffic, how people are consuming energy. All these things are that, so we have to take those into account and that's what makes it, makes it fun to model at least.
[00:17:45] Russ Altman: Yeah, that's really exciting. And I love that example because I think many of us have found the, uh, the COVID, you know, the restaurants, uh, the spilling onto the street, the farmer's markets, these have all been, like, at least in my neighborhood, huge improvements to the quality of life. Uh, and, but I can imagine that, you know, you might wanna have a system that is being smart about the lights, the traffic lights, and the, and the stop signs in the area dynamically, because traffic patterns will change and, and availability of streets will change. Um, so those examples are great.
[00:18:17] This is The Future of Everything with Russ Altman. We'll have more with Rishee Jain next. Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, and I'm speaking with Rishee Jain from Stanford University. In the first segment, Rishee told us about the built environment, the buildings, sidewalks, parks, neighborhoods, and cities in which many of us live. How do we design those to be maximally flexible as our work habits, our play habits, and the climate, are all changing. In this segment, we're going to focus specifically on heat and climate change. There are increasing temperatures in many parts of the world, and that has real implications for how Rishee and his colleagues build buildings. He'll tell us about an exciting project in Indonesia, and also some of the things that we can do to help make our own homes and workplaces a little bit more comfortable and resilient. Also, at the end of this interview, we're gonna introduce a new segment. We're calling it the Future in a Minute. I'm gonna ask Rishee a few questions. He's gonna give me some rapid-fire answers and that'll tie a bow around this episode.
[00:19:36] But Rishee, I wanted to ask you about climate change because I'm imagining, and I know, that this is affecting how you think about the built environment and how you're actually building buildings, and this becomes a more of an international global concern. So, tell me about, uh, extreme heat and how it's changing your life and that of your colleagues.
[00:19:54] Rishee Jain: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, Russ. Uh, you know, I think extreme heat is the biggest challenge facing building designers and engineers, um, in the next several decades. I think, you know, the challenge sort of takes two forms. One in which we have a bunch of buildings that we built many years ago that aren't ready for, uh, you know, this type of heat, weren't designed for it. So, they need to be adapted to, uh, tackle that. And then the other side of this is that there's a whole, uh, you know, a whole population in the world, um, that is the most vulnerable. And these are often folks who are, uh, unhoused or live in informal settlements. It's an unfortunate reality, but one in eight people in the world live in informal settlement. So that's nearly one billion plus people.
[00:20:35] Um, and they're often the most vulnerable to this type of extreme heat. Uh, you know, money of their housing is, uh, temporary in nature or informal in nature as, as one would imagine. And when temperatures rise, they often are, uh, you know, taking on the brunt of this issue. And so, this is some of the, the work that I'm really excited about, um, I'm undertaking right now with some colleagues at the School of Medicine. Uh, one of my colleagues, John Openshaw, who's an infectious disease doctor, and I are working together with a bunch of other team members to really understand how we can help change this. And the reason why this is important is because, um, as extreme heat rises and heat gets very hot, it has huge impacts on human health.
[00:21:16] Things like how well we sleep, um, our vulnerabilities to sickness, how children's brains are affected, um, things like, uh, you know, maternal care, all sorts of challenges, um, you know, kind of emerge. So that's talks a lot about the problem. But I think as an engineer, I'm always trained to think about, you know, what is a solution you can do? So, a solution that has been sort of proposed is what we like to call cool roof. Which is simply taking highly white and reflective paint and painting the roofs of many of these informal settlements. As engineers, we've done a lot of models. We've even done a lot of field studies to understand, okay. Uh, when we do this, it does change the temperature. Um, you know, we can, we can get, you know, changes in temperature up to five degrees Celsius. That can really matter.
[00:22:01] Russ Altman: Oh, that's a big deal.
[00:22:02] Rishee Jain: Yeah, that's a big deal.
[00:22:04] Russ Altman: That's a big deal.
[00:22:05] Rishee Jain: Especially when we're at the higher ends of these things, when we're, you know, measuring things like forty-five or fifties degrees C, that's really hot. Um. And, you know, every degree matters in that, in, you know, in that space, especially when we're talking about comfort, but also these other things. So, we've been able to do that. My colleagues on the health side of things and the, uh, have been able to tie heat and its impacts to human health outcomes. What we've not been able to do is actually tie these two things together. What happens when we make this change? And, uh, you know, how does it impact downstream effects of human health? And so, what we're doing together now is really taking those engineered systems and those human systems and putting them together and studying if we do these type of things, if we paint roofs like this, what are the impacts downstream, um, that they're gonna, they're gonna have on human health outcomes. We're doing this in Makassar, Indonesia, which is a, uh, you know, a large city in a pretty large informal, they have a pretty large informal settlement population. And, you know, many folks are interested in this. This is gonna have a huge impact on people's health. But in addition to that, uh, you know, policy makers are interested. 'Cause there's a huge challenge of when the heat rises, there's people that can't show up to work 'cause they're sick. There's people that, uh, can't go to school. Elderly are impacted. So, there's huge policy and health policy, income, uh, implications.
[00:23:25] Russ Altman: So, so, so this is really, so tell me what, what for your, um, for your medical and health colleagues, what kind of study do you do? 'Cause I can imagine some of these are short term benefits, but there's gonna be other chronic benefits that you would have to, it would take years to see the benefits. So how are you approaching that so you can kind of get, I guess, my guess is you're looking for some quick wins before you start doing ten, fifteen-year studies.
[00:23:51] Rishee Jain: Yes. So, there's, you know, the absolutely, I think the holy grail from my colleagues, I don't wanna speak too much for them, is these longitudinal studies that actually demonstrate what are the real impacts on human health. Um, those are expensive and hard to do. What we're actually trying to do in this first project is actually just understand the impact it has on things like your heart rate, things on your sleep, uh, um, quality. So now with the, with wearables being so readily available, we can actually hand out wearables to people, paint their roofs, and then measure these impacts in real time. Which we know from prior work, um, that does have an impact on those longitudinal dimensions. And so, we can just demonstrate some of these smaller key metrics, then we can say, Hey, uh, people are sleeping better, their heart rates are lower and not, uh, elevated. We hypothesize that's gonna result in much better outcomes when we look 10 years from now, especially when we look at children and elderly, which are the two most vulnerable.
[00:24:45] Russ Altman: So, so listen, have you gone far enough into it, in addition to these quantitative measures, are, are the people whose houses are now white and reflective, are they reporting just informally, uh, any kind of experiences that are, that give you, uh, optimism about the results of these studies?
[00:25:00] Rishee Jain: So, we we're just starting that, uh, that process of painting their, their roofs, but the reports in the past have been the case. And that they often report, uh, positive outcomes, largely because when we go in there, we paint it, we also repair if there's a hole in the roof or something like that. So, these are often done in tandem, uh, because, you know, I think about my own home. If someone says, Hey, I'm gonna come and, uh, you know, change your light bulb, and I'm like, well, you know, that fixture's actually cracked. Maybe we should fix that first, right? So, it's human nature to do that. So, we often have to tag team these things together, and that actually demonstrates a material benefit to folks even before the, you know, the, the hot season arrives and before they're really dealing with it that like, okay, we've repaired a few of these things as we're painting.
[00:25:47] So we've seen that effect happen. We have seen some reports of people’s perception just being better of their living space. And again, it's hard to quantify these things, um, you know, without, uh, uh, you know, a longer-term data. But it's interesting anytime you make an intervention, you know, I think my colleagues in the medical school called this the placebo effect, uh, that people are just generally saying, you know, we, we see someone caring about this challenge, and so we're, it's reflecting on their wellbeing to actually, uh, you know, to have something done about it.
[00:26:18] Russ Altman: So, to finish up, I want to go back to something that you just said quickly, but you said that, um, uh, there's a lot of buildings that need to be retrofit, uh, and that that's another challenge, another way to handle this. So, in the, in the example that you were just discussing, you have the ability to actually go ahead and do some new white paint, and it might change things a lot. Uh, it reminded me of, I, I had a new roof put in and the, the contractor told me that I really should have these silver linings on the, uh, on the planks. The four by eights on, and, and, and I noticed that, so I spend a lot of time like, uh, on an elliptical trainer in my garage, and it could get very, very hot in the summer. But after these, like silver coated, um, uh, and this silver was actually on the inside, but I think it was, the idea is to radiate heat.
[00:27:09] Rishee Jain: That, that's, that's a cool roof, by the way.
[00:27:12] Russ Altman: Oh, is that a cool roof?
[00:27:13] Rishee Jain: Yeah, that is. It just looks a little bit different. So that has a different reflective property, and it sits underneath your shingles, but that's exactly what we're talking about.
[00:27:22] Russ Altman: Yeah. So, it, it did, it did change my life because the, my garage is much more pleasant to be in and it kind of looks cool, no pun intended, because I have almost like this shiny mirror on the, uh, on. So, I wanted to ask what is the status of our ability, uh, uh, to in places like where you and I live to do these retrofits and what are the challenges and kind of is there anything exciting happening in that area? I was excited by my silver coated roof, but.
[00:27:50] Rishee Jain: Yes. And so, I think, you know, this presents a completely different challenge, uh, Russ. So, I think when we're talking about other parts of the world, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, they're building new cities, uh, but they're building tons. I think the challenge for, you know, here in the United States in many other parts of the world is how do you retrofit old buildings? And I think the challenge on this is that it comes to, briefly, back to this human component. Anytime you're gonna design an intervention where people are living, you have to minimize disruption. And I think that that's the, the really big challenge and innovation that's happening in this space. Um, so for example, you happen to be getting a new roof, and that was a good intervention point. Had somebody not told you about that and you installed your roof, you weren't gonna go and rip up all the shingles and do it again.
[00:28:37] Russ Altman: And he really did need to tell me, I said, what are you talking about? Like, he told me about this, and I said, what? Uh, and then, you know, of course it worked.
[00:28:48] Rishee Jain: Yeah, exactly. And so, I think there's two things. One, is that there's an actually an information gap in training gap on how we get, uh, contractors and people who are on the ground building these things about new technologies and how they may have a small cost differential of ten percent but often the payback period is a year or two, and you really get huge benefits from, from, from this. The second piece is how we design interventions that could be modular in fashion. Um, how we can actually do them, where they can be installed in your house in a day. You don't have to move out. You don't lose, you know, they don't put giant holes in your wall where your kid's sticking their hand in.
[00:29:25] Sorry, that's, I've seen that from examples. Live those, uh, lived those. And these sort of things. And so, I think that that's where there's a lot of innovation happening. Everything from things that, you know, often people don't think about that goes behind the walls. And, uh, you know, 110-volt heat pump water heaters that can be plug and play. Different types of new heat pump, air conditioning and cooling and heating systems that can be easily placed, um, and put in place in lieu of what you have it now without a ton of ripping up walls. And these, yes. And so that's a lot of where I see the innovation happening is how you design products and new things that can be plug and play rather than having to be a complete gut renovation and redesign.
[00:30:08] Russ Altman: So that sounds great, and that sounds like a, it could be a tip for, for people who are wondering what they can do in their own situation is that it might be worth a consultation with a structural engineer or a contractor to find out what, which of these kind of, I don't want to call 'em quick fixes, but these more modular solutions might be a, a winner, winner for them.
[00:30:29] Rishee Jain: Yeah. And there, and there's actually a lot of innovation in software that allow you to put your address in and they can do some very cool analytics and uh, um, you know, using new generative AI tools to tell you, here's some exam, here's some potential places you should look given the age of your building, where you're living. These sort of characteristics. And we work on some of those models too. So, I think people just don't know. And so, you know, if they can type their address in and say, Hey, next time you're thinking about, or next time you need to, you're doing this type of, uh, you're replacing your washer and dryer doing something like this, here's a quick win you can do. And you can buy that appliance at Home Depot or wherever you buy, uh, anything else you buy.
[00:31:12] Russ Altman: That's great. And, and thanks. And thanks to Rishee Jain. Uh, this is Russ Altman in The Future of Everything. We're gonna move to a new segment now. We're calling it Future in a Minute, and I'm gonna ask Rishee a few questions and I've asked him to prepare short, sweet answers, uh, so that we can understand the future of the urban environment in a minute or less. So, uh, Rishee, thanks so much for being willing to do this. Uh, uh, I guess I should ask, are you ready?
[00:31:39] Rishee Jain: I am. I am.
[00:31:40] Russ Altman: Okay. What is one thing that gives you the most hope about the future?
[00:31:44] Rishee Jain: Our ability to adapt to challenges. We've done it in the past as humanity. I think we can do it in the future.
[00:31:51] Russ Altman: What is one thing you want people to walk away from this episode of The Future of Everything remembering or now knowing.
[00:31:58] Rishee Jain: Uh, that we shape our infrastructure, but our infrastructure shapes us. So, think about those decisions.
[00:32:02] Russ Altman: Aside from money, what is one thing that you, Rishee, need to succeed in your research?
[00:32:07] Rishee Jain: I would say willingness of the, uh, public to try new tools. I think the challenge we have is we're developing all sorts of new things. Until we actually put it into play in the real world, we, we don't learn, and we don't know what doesn't work.
[00:32:21] Russ Altman: If all goes well, what does the future look like?
[00:32:24] Rishee Jain: The future to me looks like a place where everybody has safe, comfortable, places to live and work, and their environment can adapt to who they are, not just the generic person.
[00:32:33] Russ Altman: Finally, if you were starting over again and you needed to get your PhD in a different discipline where, what would that be?
[00:32:40] Rishee Jain: I would say I would go back and get a PhD in art history or architectural history. I think there's a lot we can learn for how our ancestors did and designed and built and express themselves to inform what we can do in the future, especially when it comes to extreme heat.
[00:32:56] Russ Altman: That was Rishee Jain and that was the Future in a Minute. Thanks so much, Rishee.
[00:33:00] Rishee Jain: Thank you, Russ.
[00:33:01] Russ Altman: Thanks to Rishee Jain, that was the future of the built environment. Thank you for listening to The Future of Everything. Don't forget we're approaching 300 back episodes where you can listen to a wide variety of discussions on everything. In addition, we'd like to ask you to tell your friends, neighbors, family, and colleagues about The Future of Everything if you're enjoying it. Word of mouth is a great way to spread news about The Future of Everything. You can connect with me on many social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Threads, Blue Sky, and Mastodon @RBAltman or @RussBAltman. You can also follow Stanford School of Engineering @StanfordSchoolOfEngineering, or more simply @StanfordENG.
