Smart Building

Smart Building

Creating a smart building starts with linking core systems such as lighting, electricity meters, water meters, pumps, heating, fire alarms and cooling systems with sensors and control systems. At an advanced stage, even elevators, access systems and shading can become part of the system. At the most basic level, smart buildings thus make occupants more productive with lower costs and environmental impact.

IoT? Smart Building?

The subtle difference between general IoT and a type of smart world is that a smart world usually describes the use of an IoT network in a specific application or industry, in this case smart building or a smart building.

Smart buildings include private homes, offices and commercial buildings, workplaces, factories and warehouses.

Smart buildings provide actionable information about the building itself or a specific space within it so that owners or tenants can better manage it. The goal of a smart building is to reduce operating costs, improve occupant comfort, automate the management of energy consumption, track the status of key building assets, and meet global industry regulations and sustainability standards. To be effective, smart buildings require complex monitoring of the IoT networks that control the building system.

Application areas Smart Building:

Smart buildings go beyond the concept of automation, a key feature of IoT. An intelligent building system must be able to evaluate the data collected by the sensors and react automatically to the data, e.g. activate a sprinkler system in the event of a fire without human intervention.

Private houses

Smart homes are designed to improve the safety and comfort of residents, enable remote control of many home appliances, automate home maintenance schedules, monitor energy consumption, and control home security systems. Central to the development of smart homes is the concept of assistive technologies. In the IoT era, the concept of assistive technologies is expanding.

Examples of assistive technologies include devices that can automatically schedule the on and off of appliances such as lights and washing machines. Smart medical and health devices are assistive technologies used in smart homes to remotely monitor elderly or ill residents and children. Wearables sensors in smart homes automatically open doors, maintain room temperature, and monitor and analyze energy use in the home. Safety sensors in smart homes can detect and report gas and water leaks and security breaches.

Offices or commercial buildings

A smart office building or commercial complex enables automated, centralized control of water and power, lighting, heating, ventilation, security, parking, waste disposal, elevators and emergency exits, access control to computer systems, and garden and equipment maintenance over an IoT network.

In retail, IoT sensors around stores can help companies collect data such as when a customer entered a store, what they were interested in, and what they purchased. Smart Commerce helps marketing and product teams optimize store layout, maintain optimal inventory levels, monitor employee behavior, improve product tracking such as return rates, monitor wait times in queues and customer traffic, and automate checkout.

Commercial IoT applications deployed in supermarkets, shopping malls, hotels, healthcare facilities, museums and exhibitions, and recreational facilities aim to create a pleasant customer experience outside the home. To create a comfortable environment, sensors monitor and automatically adjust air quality, lighting and temperature in public buildings. Commercial IoT applications manage access control and security, monitor inventory in retail stores, collect data about people’s behavior in public places, and provide location services for visitors to restaurants. Commercial IoT is not to be confused with consumer IoT, which deals with personal wearables and smart home devices.

Communication in commercial IoT solutions takes place via numerous connectivity types, including Bluetooth, WiFi, LoRa, 4G LTe and ZigBee, depending on the application.

Workplaces

Smart workplaces have hardware and software for improved communication and collaboration. In smart work environments, sensors can keep an eye on business equipment such as company laptops. Smart workstations enable automated monitoring of IT security vulnerabilities and remote management of off-site employees and contractors. In smart workplaces, many everyday tasks such as planning a suitable conference room or catering for a meeting can be handled remotely or by digital business assistants. In smart workplaces, new employees can receive push notifications that guide them through their new office, telling them, for example, where they are in the building or what security clearance they need to enter a particular office. In a smart workplace, the coffee never runs out, the toilets are always flushed, and visitors never have to drive around the block to find a parking space.

Factories & Warehouses

In the industrial sector, smart factories and warehouses are managed via industrial IoT (IIoT) networks. The IIoT is a combination of smart factories and warehouses, smart supply chains, smart logistics, and smart industrial machines, creating a smart industrial ecosystem.

One example of how smart buildings are being managed in the industrial sector is the use of robots in factories and warehouses. The use of robots in smart industry is referred to as the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT).

ZEV: Association for self-consumption

An ecologically and economically sensible energy supply for your multi-party property?

The correct answer is ZEV, which means producing your own solar power. This is done by a photovoltaic system with an optimal storage solution. Everyone will benefit from decentralized energy supply, whether owners, tenants and, last but not least, our environment or the climate.

How does ZEV work?

In a ZEV, the self-produced electricity is used for different parties and thus the self-consumption can be optimized. They still remain connected to the power supply. However, if your photovoltaic system produces more than you consume yourself, the surplus is fed into the grid and you receive compensation for it. If the production of your plant is not enough to cover the common consumption, you purchase the additional electricity from the grid.

ZEV benefits for owners:

• High profitability and fast amortization thanks to optimized self-consumption
• Profit can be generated from energy sales, this has a disproportionate effect when energy prices rise, because your production costs remain the same over a long period of time
• Secure capital investment due to a calculable return
• Increase in value of the property (sustainability concept)

Benefits of ZEV for residential parties:

• Lower electricity prices and generally more independent of the grid operator
• Preparation for entry into e-mobility (integration easily possible)
• Fair and consumption-based billing of solar electricity
• Environmental protection: climate-friendly solar power is produced and used

The automation standard for your building

KNX is a proven standard for commercial and residential building automation. Today, automation no longer has to be complicated. It simply requires a system that eliminates the problems of isolated devices by ensuring that all components communicate in a common language. What kind of device you want to use no longer matters. Whether control of lighting, shutters, security systems, energy management, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, alarm and monitoring systems, interfaces to maintenance and building monitoring, etc.. All these functions operate via a unified system. This is called the principle of interworking.

Do not miss visitors

The doorbell rings, but you are not at home?

With DoorBird’s solution, you will be notified immediately via smartphone when someone rings your doorbell.

You can:

• Your visitors see,
• talk to them,
• and even open the door.

DoorBird combines an exclusive design with the innovative IP technology in the door communication sector.

Smart Building: BIM ready?

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is now the foundation of digital transformation in architecture, engineering and construction, and so part of Smart Building.

What is BIM?

BIM is the holistic process for creating and managing information of a construction object. Based on an intelligent model enabled by a cloud platform, BIM integrates structured, multidisciplinary data to create a digital representation of the asset throughout its lifecycle – from planning and design to construction and operation.

• With a fundamental understanding of BIM and the know-how for contemporary, technological implementations.
• For your first, independent planning according to BIM standards.
• Through more productivity, quality and planning reliability, while at the same time preparing you for the new demands on the market.