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The EcoTech Smart City of the Future
Built With Smart Buildings
Smart Buildings
Smart buildings utilize advanced technology to achieve a series of benefits. These include: improving building performance in such areas as energy, operations, security, and comfort; lowering the costs of equipment installation, operations, and service; and generating significantly higher user-satisfaction rates. To meet these goals, all smart buildings require the intelligent infrastructure that digitalization enables. The movement in the digital transformation of buildings is experiencing strong growth with the sales of smart-building technology predicted to grow in the region of 30% per annum. Converting existing building stock to smart, digitalized building operating systems is expected to gain momentum over the next few years. Until recently, functions such as fire protection, climate control, ventilation, lighting and video surveillance had still been controlled separately. Now, modern, sophisticated management stations allow all building systems to be integrated into a single platform.
There is a growing awareness of the social opportunity cost of failing to invest in smart buildings. Smart buildings enable many social and community benefits: reduced energy consumption and more responsible use of natural resources; reduced pollution that leads to better public health; more efficient hot-desking and space occupancy to attract workers; better integration of home and remote work environments to improve productivity, reduce commuting, cope with increased urban migration, and improve work-life balance; reverse vending to provide employees with convenient food and drink, but also manage waste recycling; and much more. Benefits of smart buildings may also deliver a financial advantage, their main focus is on social, environmental, health and quality-of-life benefits. In the private sector, a number of trends are putting commercial property portfolios under considerable competitive pressure. Low interest rates and high investor demand have driven yields down, while e-commerce and flexible/remote working have put pressure on the retail and office sectors, respectively. In the public sector, aging populations are exerting escalating pressure on healthcare. Meanwhile, regulatory environmental standards are demanding the conversion of government buildings even without the provision of extra capital, and further public sector borrowing is being discouraged in many countries. The public or private sector brings with it the issue of how “responsible” it is to defer investing in smart-building conversion. Every day that a building has not been converted to “smart” is a day in which money savings have been foregone, unnecessary natural resources have been consumed, and social benefits have not been delivered to citizens and employees. In other words, failing to convert to smart buildings could be seen as negligent, wasting the opportunity to reduce energy consumption and cost or to create better, healthier, more productive places for people to live and work. Moreover, the penalty of inaction does not only mean missing out on savings today, it also substantially increases future costs – a phenomenon often known as “deferred maintenance.”
Smart Building Trends
2021
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Non-domestic buildings produce between 10% and 15% of total carbon emissions. Smart buildings can reduce those emissions by 15% to 25%
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The conversion of smart buildings is expected to further gather pace – with predictions of the smart building technology market anticipating 30% annual growth over the next five years.
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Public and private-sector CFOs, are under pressure to focus their capital on other investments, such as research and development, innovation, software, branding and marketing.
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Smart Buildings are a clear cost saving benefit for buildings owners, their shareholders, public-sector property portfolios and taxpayers – not to mention the environmental benefit for occupants.
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Benefits of Smart Buildings include energy savings, an improved environment for occupants, remote digital interaction and access, more efficient security and facility control, improved facilities management productivity, and more.
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Organizations are eager to move to smart buildings to reduce energy costs, meet increasingly strict regulations in areas such as air quality, or simply provide healthier, digitalized, more functional places for occupants, visitors and employees.
Smart City 2.0— Advanced
Focuses on Enhancing the Citizen Experience by operating at the intersection of the 3Ds:
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Data
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Digital
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And Human-Centered Design
Smart Building Solution Trends
2021
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The smart building-technology sector is combining technology, services and financing into smart-building solutions.
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“Smart Buildings as a Service” solutions can usually be structured so that there is zero-net-cost (or even cost savings) across the contractual period for the building’s owner.
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When the initial contract period is over, the building’s owner continues to receive the ongoing benefit of reduced energy consumption.
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“Smart Buildings as a Service” – harness the savings from reduced energy consumption and use those savings to fund the upgrades that make buildings “smart.”
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Zero-net-cost (or even cost savings) can be considered self-financing.
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The potential for “self-financing” smart-building conversion, for countries around the world, across three sectors: commercial buildings, government buildings and hospitals
The Internet of Things In Smart Buildings
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“Deferred Maintenance”
Refers to any failure to invest in maintenance or improvement measures that will cause increased costs further down the line.
Deferred Smart Building Conversion- Includes everything at the single-systems level, such as HVAC, or for a whole building or building portfolio
Deferred Smart Building Conversion
Includes everything at the single-systems level, such as HVAC, or for a whole building or building portfolio
One widely quoted U.S. expert commentator has noted that for every $1 of deferred maintenance, an organization will incur $4 in remedial future costs. This further underlines the urgency of smart-building conversion. Other studies have noted that energy costs grow by over 80% as a result of deferred maintenance and that the issues of deferred maintenance and disruptive technology conversion are intimately linked.
EcoTech Smart Buildings
Smart Buildings through the Implementation of IoT, Sensors, Renewable Energy Sources, & Building Management Systems, and Data
Smart Buildings Challenges & Pressure
Understanding the benefits of smart buildings is one thing; finding practical, affordable and sustainable ways of achieving smart-building conversion is another.