Page 18 - RC19 RealcommEDGE 2019 Fall Issue

Intelligent Buildings

BEE’AH SUSTAINABLE HEADQUARTERS:

THE WORLD’S FIRST

FULLY AI-DRIVEN BUILDING

ee’ah is the fastest growing waste man-
agement company in the Middle East,
with a reputation as a force of change in
the region. Their new world headquarters unifies systems such as building management, security
B definitely pushes the limits on what is and employee services.
possible when environmental sustainability goals are
fully immersed in digital technology for smart buildings. Creating an AI-enabled building must go beyond the
A vision has truly come to fruition in Sharjah, UAE. basics of the market today. The smart experience does
not mean simply having a virtual assistant or having
Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects with flowing lines to facial recognition software. It’s gathering the data to
resemble the sand dunes it resides in, Bee’ah is a futuris- really tie the use cases industry together, to actually
tic site fully powered by renewable energy and optimized make the building self-aware so it can do things on its
for net zero energy consumption. The site will achieve own. It must leverage brand new capabilities enabled by
LEED platinum certification and zero carbon emissions IoT, Big Data, Cloud, AI and natural language program-
within two years of operation. It will be the first building ming. It must, in some cases, predict the future to fore-
in the region (and one of the first in the world) to have full cast life-cycle management for optimal operations long
integration with AI. after construction.

To achieve this, Johnson Controls’ Digital Vault offers The Digital Twin
extended capabilities built on Microsoft Azure to pro- One interesting technology aspect is the development
vide intelligent edge systems and software, enabling of a digital twin; this digital twin is unlike most others
a data platform for people to build smart building in that it interacts and communicates with the various
experiences. The platform offers personalized recom- subsystems, with standard operating procedures that
mendations for efficiency, enables frictionless access allow the building to flow and work better. In keeping with
and security, has a natural language user interface and the goal of the frictionless experience, the digital twin

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