IRT: AI-automated image cropping to estimate heat loss in homes

I. Company Overview

Company Name: IRT
Industry: Building Construction
Location: Dundee, Scotland 

Dundee-based IRT is a thermal imaging company that helps housing developers and associations make their property portfolio more energy efficient. They partnered with The Data Lab and Robert Gordon University to automate the cropping of thermal images via AI to reduce heat loss in homes and support Scotland’s net zero strategy.

 The Challenge: Enhancing thermal imaging processes

Since 2002 IRT has surveyed over 350,000 homes across the UK and helped hundreds of housing professionals plan retrofits to make their homes more energy efficient.

The organisation has a unique framework to process and analyse thermal images to estimate the heat loss in homes, capturing between 300-500 properties per day. However, it currently relies on staff to manually process and prepare images for analysis. This includes among other things removing unwanted elements such as windows and doors (where reflections can be confused for heat loss), or neighbouring houses and cars.

The Solution: Using AI to improve efficiency

The Data Lab funded knowledge exchange activity with Robert Gordon University and Dundee-based thermal imaging firm IRT enabling them to develop and use AI to optimise their processes and improve productivity. The project focused on developing AI-based software to automatically remove redundant objects including trees and cars from its thermal image scans, saving the organisation significant time per year in manual cropping processes. The solution will allow the IRT team to accelerate their existing capability in the decarbonisation of the built environment, improving housing stock. This is in line with Scottish Government policy to address fuel poverty and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Outcomes: Enhanced collaborations and energy performance assessments

As a result of the project IRT are now developing AI tools to enable them to process thermal images at scale – making it up to 10x faster for IRT’s team to analyse images, freeing up staff time to focus on analysing the processed data and speeding up their service to customers. These will be included in its cloud-based software (DREam) helping users assess their housing portfolio for energy performance, recommending approaches to retrofits and providing information on available grants to fund retrofit activity.

Following this work IRT and now engaging with the BE-ST Innovation Centre and exploring an opportunity to work with the Robertson Group and University of Dundee on a project to analyse and reduce heat loss across the University’s entire estate.