October 27, 2015 - Health Care Facilities
Question: What are the benefits of IoT for building occupants today?
Answer: There is very little immediate benefit to the occupants for existing buildings. In the longer term as buildings are retrofitted and updated, or for new construction, the better instrumentation provided by IoT technology will result in better Indoor Air Quality and better occupant comfort.
Question: What advantages does IoT technology provide for facility professionals today?
Answer: IoT technology has the potential to provide more granular data to BAS and EMS systems, to add intelligence at the edge where incremental adjustments can be automatically applied, break down the traditional barriers between traditional building infrastructure systems (HVAC control, lighting, access security, occupancy, etc.) and improving both occupant comfort and energy efficiency as the BAS, EMS, and other building systems learn how to utilize both the new sources of data and cooperate with the intelligence built into them. Layer on top of this the ability to store and analyze massive quantities of data through Big Data technologies and Analytics engines makes building metrics and benchmarking against like properties a reality. Turning this huge amount of data into actionable information further improves building efficiency and cost savings without sacrificing occupant comfort.
Question: Are the benefits and advantages of IoT technology being realized today, and can you provide an example?
Answer: I think the best example of this is the Microsoft campus where through Big Data and analytics they are able to focus their maintenance and support activities to the issues where they will receive the most bang for the buck invested.
Our S4 Open: BACnet-N2 Router has been providing access to data locked inside of proprietary systems by publishing it to BACnet IP where modern on-site or cloud based applications can be used to turn raw building data into actionable information. A purist would possibly not call this IoT data but I’m willing to argue that legacy buildings must be included in this shift in paradigm and the S4 technology will be there to do the heavy lifting. In the near future options will be offered to publish this data to BACnet/WS and other Web Services based protocols as IoT standards come into general acceptance by the industry. Essentially, the S4 Open Appliances will be acting as a proxy agent to present the information locked in proprietary BAS systems as IoT data until the transition to new technology is completed sometime in the future as building owners can afford to make those investments.
Source: Steve Jones, Managing Partner, The S4 Group Inc.
For more insights on the products, technology, benefits and challenges of the Building Internet of Things, visit www.FacilitiesNet.com/IoT
