If you manage a building, you may have heard of “smart buildings.” These are buildings that have advanced technology to help you control things like temperature and energy use. Smart buildings give you more power over the premises’ functions.
When you have more control over your building’s environment and operations, you can experience many benefits. For example, you can remove people from an area if the air quality worsens, or you can save lots of money on electricity by controlling your HVAC system more efficiently. The outcomes of making smart building decisions are actual and very good for the people inside, your business earnings, and the planet. That’s why 70 percent of companies plan to spend more on innovative building technology soon.
If you want to know more about such buildings, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll go over the basics, starting with what an intelligent building is. We’ll also explain why so many building owners are using this technology and how you can get started with it.
Let’s dig in.
What is Smart Buildings (IOT)?
These buildings are equipped with devices that can connect to the internet, such as sensors and software. These devices monitor different things about the structure and collect data. Moreover, this data can be analyzed to understand how the building is used and identify ways to make it more efficient and comfortable. Advanced building systems are not only about advanced control mechanisms like the BMS.
Getting Started With Smart Buildings (IOT)
To make your building more advanced and automated, the easiest and best way is to work with an Internet of Things technology organization focusing on commercial buildings. When you own a building or manage a facility, it’s essential to pick a provider who cares about your objectives. If you wish to brighten your building, you can partner with an IoT technology company specializing in commercial buildings. It is vital to find a provider that prioritizes your goals as a building owner or facility manager. Whether you want to solve one specific problem or integrate all your premise systems, your partner should focus on helping you achieve your objectives and not try to sell you unnecessary solutions.
As you’re evaluating providers, consider the following:
- Are analytics included in their offering? Some companies only offer sensors & dashboard, which allows you to collect building information and view it in a user-friendly way on the computer. However, these companies may be missing a critical component of advanced building technology: the analytics platform. Without an analytics module, you will have to analyze the data yourself. It requires skills and time that many facilities teams do not have. So a lot of the information collected may not be useful. When selecting an IoT partner for your smart building, it is essential to choose one that provides an analytics & machine learning service. This service will provide you with a dashboard of critical data and will analyze the data to give you helpful information you can act on.
- Does the person you want to work with know a lot about the specific innovative premise technology that you need? For example, if you are trying to figure out how to use less water, the person you work with should have experience with that kind of technology. The same applies to any other space of the building. Working with an expert partner means that they have lots of experts who know about different things, and they also have a system that can analyze lots of information. It helps the system learn better and enables you to get better results.
- Do the people you want to work with know about how devices connect? In the context of smart buildings, this holds significant importance. Most systems use radio waves to send information from one device to another. If you want to use an advanced design, it’s imperative to understand how the devices will connect. It affects how well the system will work. Ask the people you want to work with about how their devices can connect.
How can IoT make smart buildings?
Buildings cost a lot of money for most companies, so, unsurprisingly, the people in charge are always trying to find methods for them to work better and cost less.
More and more people are using IoT technology in their homes, but there are still a lot of opportunities to connect these homes to the internet. It is especially true for buildings where many people live, like apartments and condos.
Using IoT technology in building management lets you control how things work and make changes that save energy and reduce pollution. It also helps keep the indoor temperature stable, making people less likely to complain about it being too hot or cold.
If you add IoT technology to buildings that are already built, it lets the technicians, owners & energy companies watch how much energy is being used and make changes immediately. It helps everything work better and saves money.
About Iot Smart Buildings (Iot)
IoT devices, such as small sensors that don’t need wires, can be used in many places. They are suitable for keeping track of things like computers, boats, car washes, and vehicles. It’s easy to put them in place: you need to stick them where you want to measure something.
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When you integrate advanced devices into a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI), like Edge, it can examine the information from sensors & show you how to use energy more efficiently. By analyzing data about the building and its surroundings, you can see how everything works together and make improvements. It often means you use less energy, the indoor temperature is better, and you waste less.
IoT platforms that are independent & flexible can make things work smoothly between stuff inside and outside of a building. Little helpers (like machines) always work to make buildings bright.
Benefits of Smart Buildings (IOT)
In the past, technicians had to go to a building and spend a lot of money to fix problems. But now, they can often fix problems using digital technology before they become a big issue. Most premises have some advanced technology, but some are more flexible. Some innovative solutions can work with many different things, while others only work with specific items.
Our solutions use special rules to keep watching your building all the time. If something is not working right, it will try to fix it or tell you what needs to change to improve things. It can be broken items or not working as well as they could. You will find out what’s wrong faster and won’t have to spend much time checking things yourself.
More benefits:
- IoT technology helps you make decisions faster by giving you the correct information. This information is based on lots of data, so you can be sure you are making good choices.
- It becomes easier to find problems that slow down work and make it less efficient. This way, you can make things work better.
- It helps you avoid unexpected breaks or problems with machines that stop them from working. This way, you can keep things running smoothly.
Examples: How IoT is useful in smart buildings?
People all over the world are using IOT in advanced premises. They’re utilizing it in lots of different ways. In this article, we will look at some specific examples of how it helps solve building problems.
· Building temperature control
The Internet of Things is changing so that people control heating, cooling, and AC systems in significant buildings. It is happening in advanced facilities that use unique technology.
Using the Internet of Things, buildings can keep track of the temperature and change heating and cooling systems. It helps companies keep their facilities working well.
This enables companies to:
- Find problems early and fix them before they become significant issues by checking for things like using too much power, shaking too much, or not working efficiently.
- Make things use less energy by watching how much they’re useful and predicting how much energy they’ll need as per the weather.
- Check for issues from far away by using a system to keep an eye on things and find out what’s wrong quickly.
· Smart water usage
Saving water is very important because there are more and more people, pollution, & climate changes that are making it harder to get clean water. We need to find new ways to take care of water to keep having enough for the future.
The average daily water consumption per person in the UK is approximately 150 liters. They get this water from taking showers, flushing toilets, washing their hands, cooking, and doing other things.
Aguardio is a company from Denmark that makes things to help people use less water by using the information to remind them to be careful with how much water they use.
Aguardio makes it easier to save water in bathrooms by using technology to
· Using advanced devices that track how long people take showers and if water leaks from the toilet.
· A website that lets people see information quickly and easily using a mobile phone connection.
· Pest control
Animals like rats, moths, mice, and cockroaches can cause significant problems for companies by getting into buildings, spreading sickness, ruining things stored, chewing on wires, and doing other nasty things. It can make it hard for the company to work and cost money.
The usual way of getting rid of pests is to put lots of traps with poison around the buildings. But this method is not very good because it uses too many traps & poison, and sometimes the traps must be checked often to ensure no more pests come in.
When traps are placed like this, they often don’t catch any pests, and they’re not good at catching pests quickly. It’s also expensive and takes time to check them by hand.
Innovative building technology can help get rid of pests by
- Smart traps can catch pests and get rid of them quickly.
Technicians can use a pest control portal to quickly and easily monitor the traps.
Pest control organizations can easily afford this technology because they can choose how much they need and only pay for it. Also, it does not use too much data, so it doesn’t cost much.
· Fire detection
People who live in houses, as well as the people who design and build them, worry a lot about fires. Previously, only one type of sensor was useful to detect fires. But these sensors couldn’t tell how serious the fire was, so that they couldn’t give emergency responders enough information.
By using special sensors that work together, advanced building technology can solve this problem of being unable to tell how serious a fire is.
The unique sensors can detect things like smoke, heat, and flames. Then, a computer program inside the technology looks at all the information and tries to figure out how serious the fire is. It then tells the people who need to know what will happen.
This means that it’s now possible to
- The technology can quickly tell the people who live or work in the building, the owners of the building, and the emergency services and police if there is a dangerous fire.
- The technology can make fewer mistakes and reduce costs by not sending false alarms.
- Give fire departments the information they need to practice their skills using real-time data without putting people inside the building in danger.
· Security and access control
It is an essential part of keeping buildings secure.
The Internet of Things (IoT) allows us to use security systems such as smart locks, Keypads, card readers, alarms & other similar devices
By using security & access control systems that are driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, we can achieve the following in advanced buildings.
- Set up systems to work automatically or manually for locks & controllers.
You can access systems from anywhere worldwide using mobile apps & devices.
Receive detailed notifications & alerts in real-time from access systems immediately.
· Structural health monitoring
Nowadays, buildings are built more robustly than before, but accidents can still occur. As facilities, bridges, and dams are constructed and get older, it becomes more important to make sure they are safe and will last a long time.
Using IoT technology in advanced premises can prevent the collapse of buildings and structures and also help them last longer by predicting maintenance needs.
By using IoT sensors in advanced premises, we can
- Collect and study data on the rack and how the structure is deteriorating.
Find and recognize any structural flaws before they get worse.
Notify people inside the building and other relevant parties about any defects or immediate safety concerns.