By enhancing connectivity between building systems and users, intelligent products and technologies help to balance operational objectives and the economic performance of buildings with due emphasis on scalability and changing priorities. These products and technologies, and the buildings they retrofit and sustain over time, stand to benefit from green measurement tools in reaching out to the larger marketplace for confirmed acceptance and propagation. Results achieved through the deployment of intelligent products and technologies in buildings make such intelligent solutions imperative to the success of a building’s environmental profile and increased adoption.
Intelligent buildings transcend integration to achieve interaction, in which the previously independent systems work collectively to optimize the building’s performance and constantly create an environment that is most conducive to the occupants’ goals. Additionally, fully interoperable systems in intelligent buildings tend to perform better, cost less to maintain, and leave a smaller environmental imprint than individual utilities and communication systems.
Each building is unique in its mission and operational objectives and therefore, must balance short and long-term needs accordingly. Intelligent buildings serve as a dynamic environment that responds to occupants’ changing needs and lifestyles. As technology advances, and as information and communication expectations become more sophisticated, networking solutions both converge and automate the technologies to improve responsiveness, efficiency, and performance. To achieve this, intelligent buildings converge data, voice, and video with security, HVAC, lighting, and other electronic controls on a single IP network platform that facilitates user management, space utilization, energy conservation, comfort, and systems improvement.
Smart Buildings – Risks, Future & Rise of Smart Cities
Risks: The smart buildings not only deliver advantages, but also have their associated risks which anyways comes with all new technologies, most critical of them is cyber-attacks. Since thousands of devices are connected to the Internet, there are many new “attack vectors,” as they are termed. These devices can be exploited by attackers to penetrate the building’s IT system, after which it’s simple to manipulate data and block functions of the building. Also with these smart technologies, the skill sets of operators would need an upgradation, which would demand convergence of conventional engineering knowledge of process/ machine with that of various other new technologies.
Future: As the society progresses, the market for smart buildings is expected to grow at a rapid pace. According to the market research firm Gartner, 5.8 billion connected devices will soon be in use worldwide, an increase of 21% over 2019 (4.8 billion devices).
Experts expect the largest growth to be in the field of building automation. 230 million devices were connected worldwide in buildings in 2018 and that figure will be 483 million in 2022. Their common objective: To make working and living more convenient and counteract climate change by efficiently utilizing the resources.
Rise of Smart Cities
With rise of Smart Buildings, the day is not far off when initially the community living and progressively cities will move toward same approach and it is expected that there will be a steady increase of smart city development around the world over the next seven to ten years, with a total value of the global smart city market projected to exceed $2.5 trillion by 2025. As our physical and digital worlds become intertwined, we have the opportunities to witness a future of continuous and lasting change, and digitalization is enabling smart cities become reality.
Conclusion
A building can be made smart by using intelligent technologies that will provide a tangible and significant return on investment. Post COVID-19, the construction industry is expected to bounce back and also expected to experience rapid growth, a growth which must be sustainable considering the referred pandemic, society has witnessed and only option is to go for smart building; however, the deployment and success of the solution will ultimately rest on the capability and experience of the project team as well as way the integration is done. The return on any of these additional investment will repay itself in much lesser time than planned since with time the as the prices of semiconductors keep following the Moore’s law, resulting in the lower cost chips. The lower cost of chips means, lower cost of various control system & technologies being put in as well as the lower cost of implementation of these intelligent system/ technologies than traditional technologies. Also, life-time operating costs will significantly lower and with more automation, labour costs are also likely to drop significantly, and more & more buildings will opt for converting to intelligent buildings. The time will come in near future when these smart building will certainly pave way for smart cities, a concept whose seed were sowed few years back by Honorable Indian Prime Minister of India.
Concluded…
Prabhat Khare holds BE (Electrical) & a Gold Medalist from IIT, Roorkee. He is an Automotive (EV) & Engineering Consultant, as well as a Technology Article Writer. He is a Certified Energy Manager (BEE) & Lead Assessor for ISO 9K, 14K, 45K & 50K. He can be reached at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prabhatkhare2/.
