Smart Buildings for a Smart and Sustainable Future
Intelligent, convenient, energy-efficient and will become a fundamental part of the energy transition across the globe. But what are they exactly and why are they considered a frontier for the digital revolution?
Transitioning towards Smart Buildings
Have a quick look around your room. It is most likely full of sophisticated digital technology: laptops, smartphones, fast Ethereum internet, smart TV and maybe an artificial-powered smart speaker. However, the building itself has not really changed since the introduction of electrical wiring and central heating which were established many decades ago. This has led to several social and environmental impacts. In Europe alone, buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions. In response to that, governments are taking immediate action to reduce the energy required by existing buildings by 60–80% by 2050. Behind this ambitious goal stands the concept of Smart Buildings.
What is a Smart Building?
7:30 on a Wednesday morning: A BABLE employee drives his electric car into the underground car parking. He does not need to spend his valuable time looking for a place to park because all of the parking spaces are equipped with sensors and a look at his smartphone app presents where there are free spaces. While the employee parks, the building technology prepares his office by setting the heating, lighting, and air conditioning to suit his preferences to stimulate a productive day. All of this is possible because of the smart nature of the building — a well-connected building of the future.
Smart Buildings aims to embed digital technologies into the fabric of the building, rather than just to objects within its environment. They utilize a wide range of well-established technologies which make Smart Buildings convenient, safe, sustainable, efficient, functional, and responsive to the needs of occupants.
How do they achieve energy efficiency and increase safety?
The key answer to this question is sensors. They can detect the amount o people in a room and regulate the lighting and heating automatically on that basis. Sensors are fitted in building systems such as elevators. In the case that there is a possible risk of a defect through wear and tear, technicians responsible are sent a message through e-mail with the exact issue and location of the elevator. Doing that the elevator is fixed before it fails, or expensive repairs are needed. With such a large degree of embedded connectivity, technology, and sensors if you have to be inside a burning building, make sure you are in a Smart Building as it has increased safety measures ranging from fire detection to calculating and announcing the safest and fastest escape routes for each floor.
Smart Buildings can take the form of Smart Offices, Smart Airports, Smart shopping malls etc. However, the goal remains the same; to increase convenience and reduce energy consumption.
What makes a Smart Building smart?
1) Data and information collection through sensors
2) A central system which analyses the data and takes actions
3) Actuators implementing the control commands
4) A digital twin is ideal to enable such intelligent automation
Benefits of implementing Smart Buildings
Digital leak detection
Every adult knows how extremely annoying and expensive damages from water leakage are; with wooden floors, walls and ceilings all needing replacement. In Smart Buildings, printed moisture sensors are a promising potential solution, which is integrated into walls and floors and then detect leaks at an early stage. The sensors are connected to the cloud, and hence are able to provide the property owner with an alert with an increase in moisture detected, enabling repairs to be performed before a leak becomes significant, minimizing costs and effort. Such technologies are already implemented in Smart Buildings based in the UK and Sweden.
Integrated heating, lighting, and wiring
Smart Buildings offer a great opportunity to simultaneously reduce construction costs and provide additional value to the building’s occupants by integrating different functionality into building materials. For instance, promising examples include incorporating electrical heaters into wall panels, thus removing the need for external radiators. Lighting sensors and electrical switches have the potential to also be installed into wall panels prior to installation in Smart Building, reducing the need for individual fixings that increase costs.
Risks and the future of Smart Buildings
What are the potential risks of Smart Buildings?
Cyberattacks. Considering that thousands of devices and sensors are connected to an online platform and the Internet, there are many risks for Smart Buildings to be a target of cyberattacks. In case this occurs, the Smart Buildings can be exploited by attackers to penetrate the building’s IT system, after which it is relatively simple to manipulate data and block functions of the building. Therefore, it is very important that cybersecurity steps are involved in the implementation of Smart Buildings, implying hardware-based security solutions.
What does the future hold for Smart Buildings?
75% of Real Estate executives anticipate and predict that Smart Buildings would become the basic norm in the next five years. However, despite an increasing number of pilot Smart Building projects, the expectation has not yet been paced with the implementation.
However, in 2018 around 230 million devices were connected worldwide in buildings and in 2022 that number reach 483 million devices connected to buildings. The goal of such connected devices with facilities: to create a better working and living environment by offering convenience while counteracting climate change by focusing on energy efficiency.
Want to read more about Smart City implementations? Find them on the BABLE platform!
Make sure to also take a look at our other Medium articles, and always feel free to reach out to us for any inquiry.
