What makes smart buildings truly smart?
Thomas Hartman, The Hartman Company
For several years of regular participation in At conferences dedicated to the tourism business, I heard what building owners, engineers and architects were discussing, and I knew their ideas about a smart building. The article provides a list of what is required for buildings to truly be “smart”.
To be honest, very few of the sites we have discussed and that I have visited come close to these simple and largely intuitive criteria. This is the reality. There is a lot to change for us to take full advantage of the smart home. Let's move on to the truly critical elements of a smart home. I divided them into three categories.
Here are the first two:
1. Tenants
These are the people for whom living space is everything.
A smart home is precisely what provides a simple procedure for identifying residents and maintains comfortable conditions that comply with environmental standards and other safety aspects. Also, a smart home provides services that ensure the livelihoods of people in the building.
2. Structures and Systems
A smart home is equipped with systems that minimize the environmental damage (such as depletion of natural resources) associated with ensuring the long life of a building.
There are other important factors: the specific climate and purpose of the building, which significantly simplify the structure of buildings, providing such needs as: protecting people from the sun, rain, as well as implementing the idea of natural lighting and ventilation.
Such buildings would completely satisfy the residents, not to mention the fact that they fully comply with the requirements of paragraphs 1 and 2, but they cannot be fully recognized as “smart”, since the third condition is not met.
3. High-tech approach
Indeed, a “smart home” is such because the microclimate created in it and the specific purpose corresponds to points 1 and 2, and also because the corresponding high technologies were used in the implementation of the above. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the first two points being implemented without a special technological approach. Quite the contrary, this is the approach to the design and construction of buildings that is preferable. Sometimes our industry must take a step back to advance smart building technologies.
But such buildings (or individual parts of a building) do not require the use of high technologies, and without this the building cannot be classified as a “smart home”.
In words, everything is quite simple. But if this is so, then why are so many buildings that claim a certain level of “smartness” in accordance with the internal equipment, ultimately unable to break out of the usual. In my observations, the main reason for this is that most architects, manufacturers, contractors and operators rely on the technology they have rather than the technology they need. It is this fatal flaw that is hindering the growth of the smart building sector. Technologies for creating a “smart home” have already become a market area that determines the shape of our industry.
However, market transformation requires the integration of truly new concepts and technologies, not simply the expansion and increased integration of existing ones. Otherwise, we will get more or less traditional buildings, which are what many smart houses built today are.
Until now, only a few architects have been able to incorporate into their projects bold new approaches to such issues as choosing a building site and implementing the idea of natural lighting. Such examples have a positive impact on both a person’s home and external environment. However, the tech community applies largely those concepts, systems and strategies that are already in widespread use, capturing only a small part of the unique qualities of some bold projects — clearly not enough to elevate the idea of a house above the traditional understanding.
Let's consider, what is really required to create a smart home based on advanced engineering systems.
It is necessary to focus efforts on the real needs of residents — it is not for nothing that they are mentioned in the above list in first place. After all, building owners and tenants are the ultimate goal of any commercial development. This factor significantly prevails over others. Below is my personal list of important technological aspects with which to start discussing the concept of a smart home:
1. Comfort and air quality.
We need to understand that any modern home requires, at a minimum, heating and/or air conditioning, as well as an air quality control system that covers all residential parts of the building, providing residents with comfort around the clock. The current standards allow for 20% of residents dissatisfied with the microclimate, as well as one temperature sensor for 3-5 rooms. This practice needs to be eliminated and replaced with a more proactive approach to providing occupant comfort, both in terms of temperature and air quality.
2. Human-centered ventilation, heating and air conditioning system (HVAC system).
In light of ensuring a comfortable level of temperature and air quality, it can be seen that the previous approach is to uniformly condition and ventilate the entire building, essentially ignoring the number and location of occupants. This approach in smart homes should be replaced by a different concept based on targeted comfort and distribution of air purification services in accordance with the actual location of people.
3. Individual climate control and feedback
To be successful in providing building occupant comfort, a smart home must provide occupant feedback. Residents of such a house should be provided with automated microclimate adjustment systems that are easy to manage.
They require means of creating an information request about the state of the microclimate in the room in order to provide the building automation with feedback.
4. Automatic system optimization and testing of its effectiveness.
The building automation networks of tomorrow must effectively monitor comfort levels and air quality. They use hardware optimized for the system as a whole, rather than selecting individual components. Control should be ensured by monitoring real performance indicators of the system, which allows for automatic correction if optimal efficiency is not achieved. From the point of view of human needs, economical energy consumption is most relevant. This requirement will be included in the list of essential attributes of a smart home.
5. Connection with the building's IT infrastructure
Most designers recognize the need for building engineering systems to be easily integrated into the local IT infrastructure. Residents can then easily join the local and regional information networks of their choice, both outside and inside the building.
However, the building systems themselves must be integrated into this information network.
The provision of services such as automatic call response (remote request), surveillance of the surrounding area (accident detection) and remote support function should be worked out. These network services should be implemented using standard tools and protocols.
Whenever my colleagues and I discuss the list of requirements for a smart home, we come to the conclusion that smart building projects will require the development of network services.
Yes, a highly integrated network is already a reliable basis for a smart home, but too often there is not enough attention to what additional services should be provided in this network. As a result, the design team tends to settle on services that fit really well into the control scheme.
The comfort function suffers, the performance of the fault detection system is reduced, and the occupants do not have sufficient access to monitor it.
The degree of integration of this system into a standard telecommunications platform is insufficient, without which the effective work of maintenance personnel is impossible. Buildings are completely under the care of owners, tenants and maintenance staff, essentially working the old fashioned way.
To take a step towards meeting owners, tenants and meeting the challenge posed by energy and environmental problems, we cannot do without seamless integration implemented in smart home projects.
If you and your colleagues discuss the potential of the smart home idea, do not forget that the project of a truly smart building is based on modern technologies that significantly increase the level of comfort and environmental friendliness. At the same time, the impact of building systems on the environment is minimized.
Having accepted this, we will instantly put together the disparate mosaic into a coherent picture of what is really required from a smart home.
Based on materials from the AutomatedBuildings website