Intelligent buildings are equipped with hundreds of measuring points that constantly communicate the status of the building and the indoor environment. Especially in multi-functional buildings, there are many systems involved, from security alarms to lighting control or booking systems. Therefore, eliminating data dependencies has become an important issue. Many real-estate companies collect all data in building management platforms, ensuring that they can access and utilize their information without being locked into external systems.
- Based on data insights, facility managers can control that the ventilation system stops running when the building is unoccupied or ensure that the loading stations for electric cars are charged when electricity rates are low. Especially in unique building types, such as hospitals, mixed buildings, and stadiums with constantly varying occupancy rates and schedules, there is a high potential for energy savings, says Gunnar Åberg.
Emerging technology offers new opportunities
Collecting and utilizing property data facilitates the development of entirely new services based on AI. With open building management platforms, literally, any data can be coordinated to create additional savings.
- Logged data of indoor and outdoor temperature and parameter settings for the system can, for example, be combined with forecast data for weather or electricity prices. Thus, programmers can develop machine learning services that simulate the optimized energy curve for a specific building. Based on these calculations, the control of a building can be completely individualized, ensuring sustainable energy savings. This is when Artificial Intelligence is at its best. However, today we only see the beginning of what will be possible to do in the future.
Creating value from data – many decisive factors behind
Open and accessible systems with the possibility of integrating any data source through APIs are highly strategic key success factors for building owners. According to Gunnar Åberg, it does not stop there.
- Data has no value on its own. A data set is only as good as the insights derived from it. Valuable data helps predict the behavior of people and buildings, enables the calculation of trends, improves decision making, and enables the determination of the ROI of the building, says Gunnar Åberg and continues.
- The first step is to ensure professional support in the project and to have a clear future strategy on energy savings, sustainability, health aspects, and productivity in the buildings. Although modern platforms for building management provide excellent possibilities, the fundamental enablers are the professionals who work strategically with a long-term perspective and program, configure, and constantly adapt the system. They also secure investments in costly hardware like controllers. These components must continue to work although the building management system is upgraded or changed.
