Most of today’s building automation systems are silos, using their own sensors and controls. Why should an occupancy sensor in a room help control only the lights? One of the major advantages of having intelligent sensors is their ability to talk to each other. Are we using this capability intelligently to optimize all the systems in the building? Today, the clear answer is no for most of the buildings.
Smart building management deals with smart sensors which allow for technology and data driven automation and operation of the building. This should be driven by an AI based system that learns the behavior of its occupants, the environment it is located in, and the usage of various objects and resources of the building. Based on its learnings- the system should improve the efficiency, automate various systems, and make the occupants lives easier while making operations and services very efficient.
Most of today’s buildings have quite a few systems in place for specific purposes. For example, HVAC systems control heating and cooling various zones in the building using thermal sensors, lighting control systems turn the lights on and off based on occupancy sensors, smart meters inform you of day by day or minute by minute energy usage and timers turn on watering systems. We have seen sensors that can be connected to water meters and watch for spikes, send an alert about a possible leak in the house or facility.
What if these systems can also talk to each other, and help optimize the building as a whole? Can we break the silos in building automation systems by adding intelligent sensors that can talk to each other? What could possibly be the impact of such collaboration? Some questions that could be answered are: Why is suddenly hot water usage in the dorm going up- could it be because the room temperature is down around the time when most occupants take a shower? Why is the heat on when the occupancy driven lights are off in the room- should it be also turned off? How can we use totally uncharacteristic use of water, lights or heat to detect security breaches?
An efficient system will break these silos of data and have various objects communicate with each other. An AI smart building management system can use the intelligence and the fusion of the data to solve the problems stated above and much more. Such silos exist for various sub systems in the facility as well. For example, there are IOT solutions offered by various companies that help them monitor their devices and objects- but such systems will prevent mix and match of different devices in the facility, if they don’t have a way of communicating with other systems in the facility. There are also retrofit technologies available- which will add sensors to existing devices in the facility- and they have the potential to provide open platforms for accepting data from other systems or integrating their data into existing systems.
It becomes essential in a smart building for various sub systems to communicate with each other- and standards such as FDS- Facility Data Standards will become very important in the future.
