Life-quality cannot only be improved thanks to our feeding plan or exercising routines. People usually spend a long time inside an apartment or an office, this means they also need an ally to be comfortable in these places. This is where smart building arises as a strategy to change how we interact with our surroundings and labor spaces. Learn more about smart building and discover the advantages of using IoT devices in this article.
What is smart building?
A smart building is any type of edifice that is built around technological features such as IoT sensors (temperature, humidity…), IoT devices, among others. The smart building technologies look forward to reducing energy costs through IoT energy solutions; which can be used to control lighting in the different floors, air conditioners, doors, elevators, and thermostats.
Having a building that can take advantage of technology helps to introduce automation processes in the monitoring, control, and performance of the different aspects of the building.
Benefits of Smart Building and IoT
The automation of smart buildings is one of the many applications of IoT. They bring a lot of benefits for the people who live or work there. They can keep control of the access to the facilities and monitor what areas the people are walking through. In terms of security, this may guarantee a safer space for tenants and their belongings.
So, the smart building security can be increased thanks to installing systems that control who can access the building, or different floors of it. Imagine having a company or office on one of the floors, and you manage sensitive information or expensive equipment. You wouldn’t want any stranger to walk around your floor that could represent a threat or danger to your business. Through the integration of IoT with smart buildings, you can lock your floor from being accessed by any person, and only approve the ones who you really are expecting.
The owners or managers of smart buildings can implement maintenance on time when the lights start failing, or when the windows or automatic doors don’t work properly. Also, there is the possibility to do predictive maintenance in the building.
Thanks to the different systems, the collected data of usage and wear over time of the different devices and equipment can indicate potential dates in which replacements or reparations need to be done.
This predictive approach can help to control sudden increases of energy consumption that a malfunctioning of a device can cause.
Besides, the tenants of the building can receive information in their wearable IoT devices or smart phones about the status of the lights, air conditioner, and energy management. This data can help them make decisions on home appliances that are consuming a lot of energy, or simply change a light that is about to stop working.
Smart building systems improve life quality and security
If you know why is IoT important, you understand why this plays a crucial role in smart building services. Through sensors attached to the different equipment and distributed in the building, a software that gathers the information, smart devices and apps, the managers can monitor in real time the infrastructure and make adjustments according to the needs.
The tenants can also be connected to the building’s system. Set the temperature of their rooms, or simply check the status of the water supply or energy consumption of their homes.
There are many examples of smart buildings around the world that can show you how life quality and security can be improved. There is a building in London that was awarded in 2020 for its innovation. Vodafone deployed several sensors that would allow the managers of the building to gather information from air quality, energy consumption levels, and occupant sensing.
These kinds of technologies provide people with information about their lives and surroundings. Now, more than ever, people want to have information about the environment, temperature, the quality of the air, and the smart building security. Any movement at late hours can be easily detected and generate automatic alerts to the authorities. If a fire starts in the ducts or inside a home, through the sensors of temperature, there can be an immediate alert and prevent the fire from spreading and causing deaths or irreparable damages.
A commercial building in Chicago was built taking into account the Covid-19 scenario. Imagine having the possibility to use thermal cameras to check the temperature of people in different offices, and thus, avoid spreading of any lethal virus like Covid-19. Ventilation is crucial for this post-pandemic world, where everything needs to be fresh and sanitized.
Are there more smart building solutions?
There are many devices, sensors, apps and software yet to be developed and implemented in smart buildings. All you need is to be creative.
Think of the water a building can save with smart water technologies. The consumption of energy can also be reduced with the help of solar energy panels. The cybersecurity also needs to be taken care of, a smart building may be susceptible to hacker attacks. So, it is necessary to build hacker-proof firewalls, softwares and IoT devices.
At DeepSea Developments, we believe every hardware or IoT device can aid the good performance of smart buildings. We are among the hardware development companies that have helped several entrepreneurs and CEOs to design and build their IoT devices. If you have any idea or prototype you would like to develop, we invite you to get in touch with us and get a free consultation.
