Facilities management firms are under increasing pressure to increase real estate efficiency, ensure operational consistency, and incorporate legacy buildings and systems with new facility expansions. Obtaining beneficial evidence-based information to make better decisions has become exceedingly challenging and untrustworthy, relying on either haphazard manual readings or patchy point-in-time data from conventional Building Management Systems (BMS).
The Internet of Things (IoT) provides alternative mechanisms for making buildings more sustainable and constructive. Simple, low-cost sensor devices provide valuable contextualized data in real-time: this is a connected building. We facilitate building management firms to deliver a variety of services by providing an integrated, scalable, multifunctional IoT network infrastructure, as well as a LoRaWAN network server. We can consume data from public or private infrastructure (like weather report, flight arrival and departure information), perform data analytics using AI and ML algorithms and present interactive dashboards to the BMS users to help them make the right decisions.
Building Management System and IoT
The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the last decade has provided facility managers with new ways to utilize their established building management systems alongside a wealth of IoT data. Building managers can achieve optimization and eventually create truly smart buildings management by combining BMS and IoT.
How IoT is Changing the BMS Industry
The building management system (BMS) industry is in need of a facelift, thanks to rising energy efficiency standards and complex requirements from a new generation of tech-savvy tenants. However, it would be a tragic mistake to believe that modernizing legacy BMS will inevitably cost you a fortune. With the emergence of IoT technologies and IoT building management system, you can tap into an infinite number of opportunities to optimize property operations without incurring exorbitant costs.
Smart Building IoT Solutions
Have a look at some of the smart building IoT solutions and smart building management solutions:
- Internet of Things enables energy-efficient buildings
Energy consumption accounts for a significant portion of a building’s operating costs. Structures with legacy infrastructure are finding it easier to save energy and improve their sustainability thanks to IoT technology. The consumption of electricity, gas, and water must be transparently recorded for this reason, and an efficient IoT network like LoRaWAN enables you to constantly monitor all energy-relevant places and provide comprehensive analysis. IoT devices are also used in smart building management solutions to connect disparate heating, cooling, lighting, and fire safety systems to a centralized management application, enhance areas of high use and energy drifts and correct them.
- Water leaks are being controlled by an IoT building management system
A significant amount of water is lost due to leaks in the piping infrastructure. Water is becoming a limited and expensive resource that must be constantly scrutinized. Water leakage and meter reading are two of the most expensive operational costs for building and facility managers. Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) allows for the reduction of operational costs associated with water leakage by implementing a smart water infrastructure consisting of sensors, gateways, automated meter readers, and a low-power LoRaWAN network. This is where smart building facility management proves to be immensely helpful.
- The IoT building management system improves comfort by tracking the building environment
Building and facility operators must supervise air quality, humidity, temperature, and even space occupation to make commercial and residential buildings wholesome, safe, and interesting places to spend time. Using environmental sensors is not only an IoT trend but also an essential component. Sensor technology based on LoRaWAN can be used in a wide range of applications within a building. Is the mall’s humidity too high, are meeting rooms full, and is the CO2 level in the office still within normal limits? You will have the answers if you use connected sensors and appropriate smart buildings management.
- IoT-enabled monitoring of building structural integrity and safety
IoT enables a low-cost and simple method of deploying Structure Health Monitoring systems with LoRaWAN technology for remotely and in real-time monitoring of a wide range of safety indicators, such as mechanical parameters (stress, displacement, deformation), physical (temperature, humidity), or chemical parameters (pH, oxidation of metal). This data enables early detection, localization, and quantification of vulnerabilities (fatigue cracking, degradation of boundary conditions, and so on), thereby improving the resilience of critical infrastructure.
- The Internet of Things is securing connected buildings
No building can be considered smart unless it has adequate safety and security measures in place. Fire, security, intrusion, and access control systems are major elements of a smart, connected building, according to smart building providers. Redundantly designed LoRaWAN systems based on connected IoT sensors can noticeably contribute to the creation of a well-practiced alarm chain by linking doors and windows and emergency buttons, fire alarms, motion detection for passage calculation, and asset tracking devices.
There are Numerous IoT Use Cases for Buildings and Facilities
Building management companies can connect a plethora of battery-powered things gathering data from sensors for temperature, humidity, CO2, motion, door/window opening, parking occupancy, smart plugs, and so on by leveraging a devoted long-range low-power network for IoT, such as LoRaWAN to achieve smart buildings management. The data is fed into centralized intelligent systems, which can recommend enhanced operating processes or intelligent building management. For smart building facility management the most common sensors used in smart homes and buildings are security or environmental sensors for water leakage, movement, door and contact activities, as well as humidity and temperature.
Demand Response and Energy Optimisation: linked devices can monitor energy usage within buildings, but they can also be used to regulate devoted energy storage systems such as large-capacity batteries, cold storage rooms, or water heating systems. An operator can aggregate flexible energy capacity via LoRaWAN bi-directional connectivity to detach power-consuming systems at a granular level on-demand, thereby artificially reducing the load on the supplying energy utilities.
Process optimization and predictive maintenance applications: Building management companies can benefit from a set of high-performance applications to help optimize operations, automate processes, and manage the massive amount of data generated by a BMS IoT network. Intelligent algorithms, advanced analytics, and machine learning are used in the completely integrated solution for process modeling, real-time control, and predictive maintenance operations. The applications, for example, can be used to monitor connected assets such as HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems and predict failures or the need for replacement parts.