The Smart Building Ecosystem

While many of the new buildings under design and construction today have already incorporated IoT and smart building solutions, smart buildings do not need to begin from the ground up. Existing buildings known as the built environment may add IoT technology and smart building applications to make a building smarter.

What are the components necessary to build an IoT network to create a smart building? We will review the major components of the smart building ecosystem: IoT sensors and devices, edge, fog, or cloud computing, data management, analytics software, a user interface, and a means of connectivity.

In this chapter, we’re going to do the following:

• Explore the various IoT sensors and devices that monitor an environment and send data to a computer for processing and viewing
• Discover the differences between on-site computing and cloud computing and how smart buildings combine them
• Examine how information is transmitted from...

IoT sensors and devices

Smart building devices are the systems and platforms that perform a specific task. These devices typically will have built-in intelligence to gather information and react accordingly. Many may have built-in connectivity as well such as cloud connectivity, BACnet, Modbus, or similar connectivity protocols. Examples include a building’s HVAC system, smart elevators, perimeter access, door locks, cameras, readers, actuators, controllers, and many more. For systems and devices that do not have built-in intelligence and connectivity, IoT sensors or tags can be affixed and connected directly to them.

A smart building’s IoT network begins with smart building sensors that collect operational and environmental data and automate certain activities. Monitoring and measuring a connected device are the inherent functions, along with noting any changes in the measured parameter and alerting when it’s out of range. There are many IoT sensor types, and...

Connectivity

Collecting data with IoT sensors and devices would be pointless if that data could not be transmitted to the computing platform and applications for analytics and viewing. Connecting these points should be conducted without making changes to the applications or systems.

The application programs should be able to communicate with each other to complete the transaction. This communication system exchanges signals between destinations through a channel, and the process is referred to as network communication. A transmitter to send the information is required, along with a receiver at the other end.

The two types of communication systems are line communication systems and radio communication systems. Line systems use existing infrastructure or dedicated physical mediums such as wire, fiber, cable, coax, or similar to transfer data. Radio systems use radio waves for this transfer.

Communication systems are also classified as the following:

• Analog communication...

Three layers of computing

We have established that IoT sensors collect data, and that data is transmitted using a communication protocol to a computing platform of some sort to be analyzed, viewed, and acted upon. There are different methods to achieve the computing process based on the amount of data, the speed and time required, and the financial resources available. This computing activity may take place locally within a building on or close to the source, in the cloud, or through a combination of the two.

Building management systems, building automation systems, security systems, fire alarm systems, and other building systems have traditionally been used to build computing platforms, albeit as separate and disconnected systems. Basically, each of these systems has a computing platform of its own, either within the device itself, on a dedicated server, or on a personal computer. More recently, buildings have added cloud computing in an attempt to connect these building systems...

Software and APIs

Many of the OEM vendor IoT devices such as building management systems, building energy systems, and building automation systems have computing capabilities contained within a system. Custom and often proprietary software computer programs compile and analyze data, provide visualization methods, and deliver commands to physical devices such as controllers and actuators to perform an action, such as opening or closing an air damper.

In a smart building environment, our goal is to connect and control many of these systems and to give building owners, operators, and occupants direct access and control within perimeters. Many of the applications we discussed in part one of this book require customized software to collect and analyze data and perform any specific actions required. Like smart home applications that control lighting and temperature, specific software programs are needed to operate smart features in a building.

Often, these application programs are...

Data management

In Chapter 5, Tenant Services and Smart Building Amenities, we described data analytics as the process of analyzing data collected from IoT devices using specific analytic tools and techniques. We reviewed the different types of analytics and provided examples of how data analytics can be implemented in buildings.

Building data traditionally has been collected and stored in system silos, which makes it difficult to analyze and manage. The goal of a smart building is to provide a holistic view of the entire building’s operation, and therefore, this data needs to be integrated to provide an exchange of information. To achieve this, massive amounts of data need to be ingested and processed, a task that is too large and complex for traditional database systems.

Big Building Data (BB Data) is a dedicated big data system for processing, sharing, and storing all a building’s data. Input is collected from different sensors using a common method and language...

User interface and single pane of glass (SPOG)

IoT devices collect data, and a communications network transfers that data to a computing platform locally or on the cloud. At this point, individuals will need to interact with the data and the computing platform to monitor and control building systems. The User Interface (UI) is the defined method of interaction between an individual and a computer. This interaction is conducted in the form of screens, pages, forms, buttons, and other visual elements.

Simplicity and efficiency are the desired goals for this interaction, and users typically prefer to use intuitive UIs. These replace the need for the user to learn specific commands and languages, thereby allowing non-technical people access to data. Often, users are alienated by poorly designed or overly complex navigation applications. Good UI typically hides the complexity behind the interface.

Types of UI include the following:

• Graphical User Interface (GUI): Audio indicators...

Summary

A smart building ecosystem is a complex integrated system with many components. Each component on its own will not achieve the smart building goal, but when combined, we have the framework to build the ecosystem. It starts with IoT devices and sensors that monitor an environment and send data to a local or cloud computing platform for processing and viewing.

Several wired and wireless data transmission methods and communications protocols are available, and often, smart buildings combine these. Software programs and APIs are needed to process and analyze data collected by the sensors. Data management procedures are needed to control and store the massive amounts of data collected. An easy-to-use UI allows us to visualize the data.

While this chapter focused on the smart building ecosystem, the next chapter will demonstrate how to pull these components together to develop a smart building application. Several actual use cases will be reviewed along with common challenges...