Page 57 - RC21 EDGE Summer Issue

Intelligent Buildings
GOOGLE: AN ENTERPRISE’S APPROACH TO DIGITAL BUILDINGS
HOW DO WE ACHIEVE A DIGITAL WORLD, digital city or even a digital building with little agreement on what “smart,” “intelligent” or “digital” is? How do we compare digital buildings within a city without any criteria or common ground?
One approach is to focus on creating the infrastructure to allow for any device to work with any application. This builds towards a world much more in line with
the explosive potential of the internet, rather than bespoke environments we see in buildings today that are limited in their utility. With this, organizations will be more receptive to new technology and deployments and have the flexibility to enable the key use-cases as and when they are needed that will ultimately drive the industry.
This approach can be achieved by focusing on a few fundamentals:
• Foundationalchangestohowbuildingsare designed and constructed
• Creatingatechnicalarchitecturebasedona horizontal layered approach
• Industry standards and certifications for smart technologies and environments
Foundational changes to how buildings are designed and constructed
The construction industry is one of the furthest behind in digitization, but related spending accounts for 13% of the world’s GDP. Anything within a commercial
built environment that can be monitored, sensored or controlled must follow a common set of principles, regardless of who installs it, who will operate it or what type of IoT it is.
Additionally, a process for implementation, verifi- cation and approval of standards is required to create the requisite robust foundation. This can start with each enterprise, who can design these into their own construction processes and standards.
Creating a technical architecture based on horizontal layered approach
A layered approach to define a “smart building” architecture based on a principled design creates an ecosystem that allows the overall industry to thrive and innovate, rather than simply providing a “solution” that is stuck in time and quickly obsolete. Much
like standard operating systems such as Linux or Windows, the underlying architecture is a collection of components that, when considered as a coherent whole, provides foundation support for a variety of applications and use-cases.
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