Smart Buildings on the Bleeding Edge

Smart buildings have become a bleeding-edge technology integration movement in the built environment over the past few years. The 2020 pandemic and the subsequent return to the office saw the need to release many new IoT smart building solutions before they were thoroughly tested and, therefore, came with a degree of risk often associated with bleeding-edge technology. Early adopters weighed the risks and opted to move forward to solve immediate needs around indoor air quality, building access, occupancy levels, and social distancing requirements.

Based on the growing development of IoT sensors, edge/cloud computing, and data management, smart buildings integrate data sources, inputs, and user types with actionable information to create more efficient, effective, and engaging spaces. But what’s next? This chapter will explore how the smart building impact is calculated, the evolution of smart buildings, the use of smart construction techniques...

Smart buildings’ impact on NOI

NOI is used to determine the potential profitability of real estate investments and is one of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) used by building stakeholders. It is typically determined by subtracting all the reasonably required operating expenses from the building’s revenue. This before-tax number is included in the property’s income and cash flow statements but excludes loan interest payments, capital expenditure, depreciation, and amortization.

The building’s revenue includes rental income and all other amenity services’ revenue, such as parking, storage, cafeteria sales, vending machines, and laundry. Expenses include the cost of maintaining and running the building, insurance premiums, utilities, legal fees, property taxes, janitorial fees, and repair costs. Capital expenses for large-item purchases, such as a new HVAC system, are not included in the NOI calculation.

...

Building smart from the start

Smart construction refers to the use of applications and processes that improve the construction process and the management of projects. Cloud-based technology solutions, collaboration tools, and IoT solutions are used during the construction phase. Digital technologies and industrialized manufacturing techniques come together to lower construction costs, reduce time, improve sustainability, and improve productivity. Technology advances are changing almost every aspect of the building construction industry.

Chapter 8, Digital Twins – a Virtual Representation, highlighted how digital twins and building information modeling (BIM) are used in the design phase to replicate the building properties digitally before construction to allow for better design decisions. BIM allows for the virtual tracking of assets and can deliver 3D renditions for contractors and workers to view precise details of the building. In addition to the visual representation...

Intelligent learning

Throughout this book, we have referenced AI, ML, and deep learning and their impact on smart buildings. In this section, we will discuss each of these in more detail and their expected contribution from smart buildings to unified buildings.

Figure 15.5 – Intelligent learning

• AI: AI is comprised of neural networks, deep learning, and ML, which process data to make predictions and decisions. AI can be loosely defined as machines thinking like humans.
• Artificial neural networks (ANNs): An ANN, more commonly referred to as a neural network, is modeled after the brain’s biological neurons. Here, the neurons are called nodes, and these nodes are clustered together in layers and operate in parallel. When a node receives a computerized numerical signal, it will process it, and then it signals the other neurons connected to it. This neural reinforcement creates improved recognition of patterns and expertise and enhances...

Unified buildings

What’s next for the smart building evolution? In Chapter 1, An Introduction to IoT and Smart Buildings, we defined a smart building as a building that uses an integrated set of technology, systems, and infrastructure to optimize building performance and occupant experience. We have spent numerous chapters reviewing how IoT sensors and devices, connected with computing processing capabilities and smart applications, monitor, measure, manage, and control nearly every system in a building to improve efficiency, reduce the impact on the environment, lower operation costs, increase revenue, and, most importantly, enhance the occupant’s quality of experience.

Buildings have evolved from local single control systems in the early 1980s to centralized controls in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, intelligent buildings added some communication, databases, and analytics capabilities to allow distributed systems to communicate back to a central system with a heavy...

IoT will drive the future of buildings

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has long been considered the leading authority studying and defining the impact of technology, energy, and data analytics on buildings. They worked very closely with their partners, academia, industry leaders, and the US Department of Energy to develop a 2022 report titled A Vision for Future Buildings, which begins to envision what buildings will be like in 100 years.

Figure 15.7 – PNNL vision characteristics (image courtesy of PNNL)

This integrated and coherent vision identified five characteristics and targets for achieving future building goals. They are as follows:

• Occupants: Systems are optimized for occupant expectations and behavior to deliver personalized environments and improve occupants’ health and well-being. Biometric data captured with IoT sensors will learn occupant preferences to automatically make adjustments to an individual...

What’s next

New IoT-based devices are continually being developed and we should recognize that almost any physical item can now be made smart by adding IoT sensors, some connectivity, and computing capabilities. If the return-on-investment model is favorable, chances are it will become smart. IoT device costs will continue to decrease, making more and more items candidates for being made smart.

The following are a few examples of what is trending at the time of this writing:

• Matter: 2023 will see the introduction of Matter version 1.0 from the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly the Zigbee Alliance. This 280-member alliance includes giants such as Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, and Amazon Alexa. They developed a smart home standard that allows their applications to communicate with each other and increase their cybersecurity capabilities.

Figure 15.8 – CSA Matter standard

• Smart plug-and-play power jacks:...

Final thoughts – data tagging

New IoT sensors and devices will continue to evolve and almost every aspect of a building will become smart, generating massive amounts of data. My biggest concern going forward centers around data tagging and the current lack of a disciplined tagging convention within the industry. Like the issues created by proprietary disparate building systems of the last generation, engineers are creating their own naming and data tagging conventions to describe various elements within a building.

Smart buildings need a data tagging standard that uniquely defines every element within a building to create a common language. Data tagging standards will allow data flow to move quicker and more efficiently between devices, controllers, and interrelated equipment. BrickSchema and Project Haystack were developed to handle these issues; however, they each need to be applied manually, resulting in a very time-consuming and costly process that is prone to errors...

Summary

In this chapter, we reviewed how NOI is used to measure and report the return on smart building initiatives. While all the solutions discussed throughout this book can be applied to nearly every building type, we specifically explored how smart buildings are digitalizing the commercial real estate market. Advances in smart building construction materials, processes, tools, and equipment are helping to improve safety, quality, and lower costs while reducing the time required to build buildings.

AI, ML, and deep learning will play an even bigger role in the evolution of smart buildings to unified buildings. The increased number of cheaper IoT sensors will generate massive amounts of data that needs to be processed using intelligent systems. We explored how IoT will drive the future of buildings and reviewed a framework developed to achieve the long-term vision for a building. Lastly, we listed a few examples of what we believe the next IoT-driven solutions will be and their...