Ever more essential, smart buildings are becoming more democratic and are improving the quality of life of their occupants. The IoT’s impact on the energy efficiency of buildings is a source of cost savings, security and comfort. These are all reasons that are driving the building industry to adopt it on a massive scale.
What is a smart building?
The smart building is a building equipped with innovative devices that allow it to control all equipment (electricity, heating, ventilation, security, etc.) in real time and remotely. To achieve this, the intelligent building is fitted with connected sensors and actuators from the moment it is built: these act on all the equipment in order to adapt consumption and improve the energy efficiency of the buildings in the long term, but also to provide maximum comfort and safety for users.
The requirements for buildings are indeed very high. In addition to the need for construction companies to reduce costs, energy consumption imperatives preside over the choice to build an intelligent building or a connected building, capable of generating electricity savings, regulating devices such as air conditioning and optimizing heating consumption in real time.
Finally, for the intelligent building, safety is also a major objective: the sensors placed on the equipment make it possible to set up preventive maintenance and to act quickly in case of need to guarantee buildings that always comply with standards and regulations.
Intelligent building: what are the issues and objectives?
Ecological and energy issues are obviously at the heart of intelligent building objectives, but transforming a building into a smart building meets a multitude of other needs. The systems must allow for aprofound improvement in the quality of life of the occupants, whether they are employees or residents.
For this, IoT technologies contribute to preventive and sometimes even predictive maintenance: based on the data collected by the devices, better thought-out, continuous interventions are implemented, integrated into the daily operation of the building.
Finally, the intelligent building and its automation features allow for a sustainable improvement of the Building Management System (BMS) and the life within the smart building. Composed of a set of connected services, the smart building is indeed capable of modulating the temperature, but also more globally to adapt to the changing needs of users.
The interaction with the building is thus facilitated and the needs can be formalized upstream, resulting in a clear saving of resources. Intelligent buildings are better adapted to the flexible lifestyles and work habits of users, optimize space and, thanks to the interoperability of equipment, optimally support the building ecosystem.