Smart Home Data is a Goldmine
But who owns it?
Data is extremely valuable
In the same way that a smartphone isn’t about having smarter phone calls, the Smart Home is not about the connected things. It’s all about the applications that will be derived upon all devices, data, businesses, people, etc.
So, who owns all the valuable data? If you own your house and turn it into a Smart Home then it’s quite simple: You own your data.
You have all the rights to sell it or trade it to different service providers, like the power, cable or home security company. Maybe you don’t think about that every time you sign a contract for a service, but you should read the small print and see that you get value for your data. Otherwise the service provider can generate value from your data without giving anything back to you.
Renting gets more complicated
Now the building itself becomes a hub, connecting the tech of the house with external and internal users, like the power company on the outside and the tenants on the inside.
These connected buildings have some new characteristics:
- Buildings become self-aware and continuously anticipate and adapt to changes in weather, time of day, occupant needs, and socioeconomics.
- Buildings will interact with utilities (including electricity, gas, and water), local power sources, and other buildings to provide services that will benefit building owners, utility operators, and the entire community.
- Buildings will minimize their life-cycle cost while meeting their objective functions by optimizing energy and water use, enhancing health and the productivity of occupants, contributing to a cleaner environment, and actively supporting better living.
The important, but complicating, thing is that this isn’t a Big Data solution by default, as many early initiatives assume. Not one big central IoT platform controls everything. This is because of many different data owners.
The tenants own their data about their family, the usage of their apartment and it’s connected appliances, home networks, TVs, etc., and this data must be managed in a secure and privacy-protected way or it will be impossible to lease their residence. Think of the landlord installing cameras in the shower… Privacy and security issues here are literally very close to home.
Next is the owner of the building. They have two assets generating valuable data, the sensors and tech of the building and the data about their tenants, probably anonymized and processed for statistics. This value will not be given away. It will be sold. These buildings will all be players in a new assets trading market for realtime data. Even if the original intention was just to reduce the power bill, the data that’s generated will be an asset that can be traded.
And so on…
All the participants in the Internet of Buildings, as a subset of smart city, smart home, smart predictive maintenance, smart grid, etc will be smart enough to realize the value in owning, controlling and capitalizing upon their data.
Or some smart IoT entrepreneurs will take that position in the market like an AirBnB or Uber service for data.
Read more about Internet of Things and Security at apptimate.io.
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