INTELLIGENT GREEN TECHNOLOGY
How IoT
will make
buildings
intelligent
Connecting a building and all its
subsystems and sensors to the
Internet, will enable decision
making benefitting the user,
explains Tracy Courtemanche at
Schneider Electric.
T
he Internet
of Things is
getting a lot
of attention these
days. A reason is the
size of the economic
activity generated
Tracy
Courtemanche at
– as much as $11.1
Schneider Electric.
trillion by 2025
in an analysis from the McKinsey Global
Institute. According to McKinsey Global,
the IoT economic impact on factories,
retail settings, work sites, offices and
homes could total as much as $6.3 trillion
by 2025. Some of that impact will be in
the form of sensors and other hardware
that goes into buildings. Some of it
will be building management software,
applications and services. This makes
buildings more efficient, which in turn
makes people more productive.
IoT helps make enterprises smarter.
The arrival of IoT means that the old way
of doing things will not work. Building
management systems will have to evolve.
But beyond the smart building itself, there
will also be data available from weather
monitors and financial information – like
the price of electricity, other utilities,
and even commodities. That data can
factor into how buildings are managed.
So, buildings will be more intelligent and
systems will be able to make adjustments
on-the-fly.
According to the 2016 Navigant
Research report, Data Integration for
Intelligent Buildings, one impact of IoT is
that people are going to expect buildings to
be smart. They are going to demand data-
driven solutions that improve energy and
operational efficiencies, facility planning,
preventative maintenance, fault detection,
occupant comfort, and safety in buildings.
But this requires more than sensors.
You need data integration. The data may be
in various formats, with different naming
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