2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Engineering Economics of RFID Monitored Data Center Cooling System.

Presented at Engineering Economy Division (EED) Technical Session 2

Data centers devote a substantial share of their energy budgets to cooling, making thermal management a prime target for cost reduction and sustainability improvements. This study extends prior work in the Engineering Economics of RFID by examining how AI-enabled embedded RFID systems can autonomously monitor and optimize data-center cooling performance. Partnering with RFCode, we integrate real-time RFID sensing of temperature and humidity with artificial-intelligence algorithms that dynamically adjust cooling parameters, reducing overcooling and improving efficiency.
An accompanying educational framework introduces a systems-thinking approach to teaching engineering economy within cyber-physical systems. Students apply tornado diagrams, cost-benefit models, and sensitivity analyses to evaluate economic trade-offs among sensor investment, AI implementation, and operational energy savings. Preliminary analyses indicate potential cooling-energy reductions of 10–15 % and payback periods within 12–18 months, reinforcing how economic decision tools can quantify technology value.
By merging RFID-enabled monitoring with AI-driven analytics, this work offers both a technological and pedagogical contribution—illustrating how emerging Industry 4.0 systems can be evaluated, optimized, and taught through an engineering-economy perspective.

Authors

Dr. Erick C. Jones Jr. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0559-4699 The University of Texas at Arlington [biography]

Erick Jones is an assistant professor in the IMSE department at UTA and the founder and director of the Sustainable and Equitable Allocation of Resources or SEAR Lab. He obtained a PhD from the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering program at the University of Texas at Austin, a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University, and is a fellow of GEM, NSF INFEWS, and DOE MLEF. He spent several years working in the design, manufacturing, oil and gas, and HVAC industries. During this time, he traveled around the world and witnessed how the lack of basic infrastructure like electricity, HVAC systems, clean water, internet, and banking negatively affects the quality of life of the majority of the world’s population. These experiences motivated him to pursue research that can enhance quality of life by improving access to sustainable resources and economic opportunities, particularly where a lack of physical infrastructure or economic resources presents a major obstacle, leading to the creation of the SEAR lab. The SEAR lab investigates how communities, companies, and countries can allocate their limited resources in a way that maximizes their desired outcomes in a sustainable, equitable, and resilient but also elegant way. The SEAR lab assesses these problems by combining physical experimentation, data analytics, and stochastic systems optimization to provide actionable decisions and create scalable prototypes.
Dr. Billy Gray Tarleton State University [biography]

Billy Gray is an Assistant Professor at Tarleton State University in the Department of Engineering Technology. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, a Masterâ€™s degree from Texas Tech University in Systems an
Dr. Erick Jones http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0931-1935 Prairie View A&M University [biography]

Dr. Erick C. Jones currently is a research professor at PVAMU.

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