by Shane Henson — July 8, 2013—Smart buildings are leveraging emerging machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies to become even smarter, according to new research published in the Global Sustainability Perspective from Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), a global financial and professional services firm specializing in commercial real estate services and investment management.
Per the report, six advances in smart building technology are enabling a new era in building energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction, yielding a return on investment for building owners within one to two years. They are:
- Wireless meters and sensors: Affordable wireless sensors and meters can now be used to monitor automated building equipment and relay data to a centralized remote command center.
- Internet and cloud computing: The advent of the Internet and decreasing costs of data transmission now make it financially feasible to transmit data from millions of building data points to the command center. The relatively affordable high-capacity computing power of the cloud allows for cost-efficient data analysis to an extent not possible in previous eras.
- Open data communication protocols: New software applications solve the “Tower of Babel” problem created in buildings containing multiple automated systems, each operated by proprietary controls. Today, such protocols as ASHRAE’s open-source BACnet, Echelon’s LonTalk and emerging systems support cross-platform data sharing.
- Powerful analytics software: The best new-generation smart solutions provide numerous dashboards, algorithms and other tools for interpreting building data, identifying anomalous data, pinpointing causes and even addressing some issues remotely.
- Remote centralized control: Secure Internet technologies can be used to protect data transmissions from hundreds of buildings in a company’s portfolio to the central command center, staffed around-the-clock by facilities professionals.
- Integrated work-order management: Today’s building management systems can be integrated with a work-order system to streamline communications with on-the-ground facilities staff when human attention is required.
