Technology

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Smart Buildings -- the Present and the Future

— Po-Shuo Chiu, Engineer of Electric & I&C Dept., CTCI SEC, Group Intelligent Solutions Business
CTCI GISB aims to be a “top-notch smart solution and service provider”, providing customized intelligent solutions for worldwide customers with its advanced technology and innovative thinking. This article will show the present status and development of smart buildings, and then use the 2nd headquarters of CTCI as an example of a smart building in which humans interact with the environment and facilities in a new paradigm of intelligent innovation in building construction.

The Development of Smart Buildings

As time passes and technology develops, the over-consumption by humans of Earth’s resources has resulted in changes to the climate and environment. With the rising tide of international environment protection, the concept of sustainable development was born. In 1984, the world's first intelligent building “City Place” was created in Hartford, USA, and the concept of "smart building" gradually spread all over the world.

The rise of smart buildings is closely related to the automatic control and intelligentization of electromechanical and communication equipment in buildings. With the continuous evolution of information and communications technology (ICT) come new interpretations of smart buildings, which are largely divided into three stages:
1. Automation
At the early stage of development, the 5A light-current system (Communication Automation-CA, Building Automation-BA, Office Automation-OA, Home Automation-HA and Safety Automation-SA) is one part of automation. These are individual systems, rather than an integrated system as found in smart buildings.
2. Informationization
Building informationization came about as the Internet became more and more popular. After year 2000, not only had the code for smart buildings gradually improved, but system integration technology had become mature as well. Especially in 2010, the implements of network and information technology, characterized by information integration and platformization, brought huge impact to smart buildings.
3. Intelligentization
With the rise of smart cities, information exchange and sharing within and among smart buildings are becoming more humanized and intelligent. Under this premise, the 5A light-current system and Property Management (PM) forms a so-called Building Management System (BMS), an indispensable integrated system for the safe and effective management of smart buildings. The key technologies to develop smart buildings include Internet of Things, BIM, Big Data, AI, 5G and Cloud/Edge Computing. Together, these present unlimited possibilities for smart buildings.

The evolution of smart buildings

The Technical Evolution of Smart Buildings

Internet of Things

1. Internet of Things
Internet of Things, or IoT, makes things-to-things and things-to-human communication possible. It has three special points: comprehensive perception, reliable transmission and intelligent processing. Already, IoT has been implemented in smart buildings with the developing of technology. The main trends are as follows:

(1) Open Architecture
IoT must be able to communicate seamlessly between things to things and things to human. In such an application scenario, an open architecture is needed to simplify the interface and communication protocols of different systems. The IP-based IoT architecture is the trend of the future. Take Philips Hue smart home lighting as an example. It uses ethernet cable to power and monitor the lighting equipment, thus simplifying the interface and improving wiring efficiency. Furthermore, it integrates the communication protocols to connect different systems without using a gateway. This reduces the cost and improves the efficiency of system communications. Therefore, interface simplification and communication protocol integration will be a future trend of open IoT architecture. For now, the major interfaces are ethernet cable (Cat-5e/6/6a), twisted pair, and fiber; the major communication protocols are Modbus, BACNet, and TCP/IP.

(2) Perception Density Increase
As smart buildings today have more AI, a large and diverse database needs to be established as the cornerstone of analytical decision-making to achieve energy-saving benefits and service humanization purposes such as pre-maintenance services, situational awareness services, etc. The increased installation density of sensors will also be a trend in the future. After the density of the environmental sensor network is increased, the accumulated large amount of data can improve the database, enabling the system to make more reliable decisions. For example, users will be able to more flexibly monitor lighting and air conditioning systems in different areas via a mobile app, thus better controlling the building environment such that equipment can operate at optimal levels.

(3) AIoT
The explorative growth of connected devices will heavily increase the amount of data that is transmitted and this will impact the quality of networks. AIoT (AI + IoT), as its name implies, is the combination of AI technology and the Internet of Things in practical applications, which is different in comparison with the traditional cloud-based AI application, which lets you perform machine learning or AI operations on an IoT device without returning the data to the cloud. IoT sensor stream data can be directly applied to machine learning model inference; even under network disconnection, the system can operate normally as well. Under the conditions of data security, network bandwidth, communication delay, etc., the computing task will be transferred to the terminal device or the nearest network device, which will effectively improve network quality.
2. Mobile Interconnect Technology
Via communication technology, users can use mobile phones, tablets and other portable mobile terminals to connect to the Internet of Things using mobile networks (3G, 4G, and 5G) or WiFi hotspots. In similar fashion, a broadband network IP can be used in open-based telecommunication networks for voice, data, and multimedia services. Therefore, smart buildings use mobile internet technology to interconnect systems and people within the building to achieve human-machine collaboration.

(1) Low Power Wide Area Network
Wireless communication technology has developed rapidly in the past 20 years, from the birth of the mobile phone to the 5G mobile communication now under consideration by many network providers. While 5G technology matures, many Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies have been proposed, including NB-IoT (Narrow Band-IoT), LTE-M (Long Term Evolution-Machine Type Communication) using licensed bands and LoRa (Long Range), Sigfox, etc., which use unlicensed bands. LPWAN technologies have the following advantages:


. Extended battery life and reduced maintenance costs: LPWAN technology is based on the premises of low transmission and low power consumption. Most equipment use a battery as the main power source, and the battery energy can be maintained for at least 10 years. This which not only saves energy but also reduces equipment maintenance costs.

. Wide coverage: The frequency band used is mainly Sub-1G, which has better diffraction ability and lower path loss under the characteristics of low frequency, and is suitable for long-distance transmission, so coverage is wide.

(2) 5G
5G is a next-generation communication technology derived from mature 4G communication technology. Applications include: IoT, autonomous driving, smart city, smart factory, AR/VR. The 5G standard is expected to be completed by 2020. At present, the consensus is 5G must meet at least several capabilities: data transmission rate above 10 Gbps, large-scale connectivity and sensor network deployment, far better than 4G on spectrum efficiency, coverage and low latency. Its three major application scenarios are listed below:

. Enhanced mobile broadband: Focusing on broadband transmission speeds, higher speeds for human-centric use cases give users a seamless immersive experience, such as viewing ultra-high definition (4K/8K) video or VR/AR applications.

. Massive machine-type communication: 5G technology provides the connection density to interlink a huge number of devices that require wide coverage, low power consumption and transmission speed, and has a low requirement for delay, such as wearable devices, smart meters, and smart cities.

. Ultra-reliable and low-latency communication: This application scenario has very stringent requirements for low latency and transmission reliability to ensure improved responsiveness. Examples include smart grid, remote surgery and internet of vehicle.

Three Application Scenarios of 5G. Reference from ITU-R: Recommendation ITU-R M.2083-0

After the popularization of 5G technology, the future development of various industries will be driven as follows:

Impact of 5G on industry (sources: 5G America, KT)

CTCI’s 2nd Headquarters

Together, the professional engineering expertise and innovation development accumulated by CTCI over the years is the best tool for building a smart city. Take CTCI’s second headquarters that the company is building using its own resources as an example. In addition to applying intelligent monitoring, 5G and other intelligent advanced technology in this building, CTCI integrated its three major smart solutions: Intelligent Solution Platform (iSP) developed by CTCI Innovation Research Center, Mr. Energy 50001 Energy Management System developed by CTCI ASI, and BIM 7D Intelligent Maintenance System by CTCI SEC. Working in concert, these provide a human-based environment that is safe and healthy, convenient and comfortable, and energy-saving and sustainable within a smart building that enables dialogues between people, environment and facilities. It is expected to become a model of intelligent innovation after its completion in 2021.
1. Smart Surveillance System
The computing component of the intelligent monitoring system to be implemented in the building will be divided into front and rear ends. Simple but immediate response programs will mainly leverage edge computing, while algorithms that require powerful computing power will be processed by a back-end platform. In addition, the building is designed with virtual fences around the building to enhance the alerting capabilities of the security system. Its functions include:

(1) Virtual fence system: The virtual protection zone can be set without using a physical barrier. When a suspicious person enters the protection zone, the smart monitoring system activates the alarm system to notify the manager.

(2) Smart identification system: The face recognition system is arranged in the hall entrance, basement and specific areas, and combined with the license plate recognition system of the parking management system.

(3) Human counting: This determines the number of seats in each area through the access control card and office area detector. The flow of people in and out is compared with the information of the access control seat. The area number is added and subtracted to calculate the value of the area, and finally the feedback is sent to the BMS for intelligent calculation of such things as external gas demand, big data calculation, machine learning, etc.

2. 5G Deployment
CTCI’s second headquarters building will incorporate 5G technology. This will bring advantages such as flexible deployment of equipment and interconnection between people, buildings and equipment. In addition, NB-IoT modules are also planned to be reserved for 5G deployment, in preparation for the subsequent planning of LPWAN, such as smart parking management and smart meters.

When 5G technology matures in the future, in combination with IoT, wireless sensor design can be planned to complement the insufficiency of wired design. Z-Wave, Zigbee, LoRa, BLE and other wireless technologies can enable smart applications such as smart toilet, smart office and indoor positioning, bringing smart buildings closer to their core value of people orientation.
3. CTCI’s Three Smart Building Integrated Solutions
(1) Mr. Energy 50001
A platform designed for building energy management, Mr. Energy 50001 uses Energy Performance Indexes (EnPIs) for analysis and comparison. It achieves energy management and cost saving via four phases of energy management: monitoring, analysis, planning and checking.

(2) BIM 7D
This integrated application makes repair management and maintenance service more convenient and efficient. In addition to simplifying the maintenance process, it proactively provides information about the equipment and lets users search equipment history easily, allowing them to determine the best solution in a short time.

(3) iSP
iSP is a smart platform for implementing CTCI's future IoT application. It can be applied to smart buildings, smart factories, smart parks, smart cities, etc., to collect information, analyze data, and develop system applications for buildings. The platform uses various data and external Big Data databases to provide the most efficient mode for building operation and achieve the goal of intelligent thinking in buildings.

The building management system (BMS) of the building will use MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), an instant messaging communication standard designed for IoT, as the communication format for the exchange of messages between the three intelligent CTCI solutions. It allows the BMS to collect the status and control the building systems. The energy data received by Mr. Energy 50001 and the historical records of the operating status and maintenance of the equipment read by BIM 7D are also obtained from BMS through MQTT. Finally, iSP intelligent solution platform will analyze and compare the data of the above system to provide the best energy-saving data and comfortableness of the building.

Building a Sustainable Smart City

Under the long-term promotion of the government, the development of smart building in Taiwan has gained pace. The advantage of ICT technology is not limited to the automation and services of an individual building in such areas as facility management, safety and energy saving. It extends to the provision of different infrastructure services according to different building characteristics. At present, there are many smart communities under construction in Taipei. Each must be based on the resource system and life scenes, and integrate three elements: people, ICT technology and architecture. The intelligent community innovation demonstration plan actively promoted by the government and the private sector is based on energy conservation and carbon reduction, and combines different services such as smart security and disaster prevention, smart transportation, smart medical care, smart logistics, etc. Through cooperation between the government and the private sector, and from point to surface, the smart community will be combined with diverse smart industry parks, smart hospitals and other buildings to become a sustainable smart city under the concept of circular economy and shared economy, and to realize the sustainability of smart buildings. 

CTCI has been deeply involved in the field of smart technology for many years and has successfully expanded its business fields into smart manufacturing, smart transportation, smart buildings, smart industry parks, etc. This involvement, combined with the company’s engineering strength and innovative energy, makes CTCI the best promoter for smart cities. CTCI is committed to continuing its contribution to the creation of sustainable life with its “Most Reliable” engineering service, and become one of the forces that promote the progress of the world and the sustainability of the earth!
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