The Smart Building Conference looked at the key themes of 5G, IoT and the Intelligent Edge, with an added track dedicated to the smart workplace. Amy Wallington reports.
Looking at how smart technology is being deployed within various types of buildings, the Smart Building Conference is an opportunity for industry professionals to come together to learn about current trends in this space.
Taking place in a new location this year, the conference was held at the Hotel Okura in Amsterdam the day before ISE opened. In a positive move for the event, it was extended from a one-day event last year to run an extra half day this year. The additional track focused on the smart workplace,a key theme for this year’s conference.
Opening the 2020 event was Bob Snyder, the content chairman for the Smart Building Conference who introduced the key themes being explored over the course of the day: 5G, IoT and the Intelligent Edge. With these themes in mind, each presentation throughout the day covered the latest smart technology solutions being integrated into buildings, from conference rooms to smart homes to smart office buildings to multi-dwelling units.
The first keynote was from founder of HUSH, David Schwarz, who looked at the idea of using integrated technology to visualise unseen energy,demonstrating energy consumption and production in ways that appeal to the building’s occupants.
With an emphasis on the environment,this visualisation uses hundreds of thousands of data points to enable the employees to get a sense of how their daily habits contribute to the building’s sustainability.
During the presentation,Schwarz stated: “If people learn about the building’s performance, they connect to it more and therefore work better. It is important that this information is given in small bites so as not to overwhelm, which makes the‘Energy Dial’ a perfect solution.”
Similar to this idea, the following presentation was given by Erik Ubels, the CTO of EDGE,who looked at sustainable buildings. According to Ubels:“Buildings are still the biggest polluters, causing 39% of CO2 emissions.” Alongside this: “85% of workers are not engaged int heir work. Buildings need to be inviting and engaging to make people want to be there.”
In order to achieve this, Ubels suggests there are four pillars to think about: well being, design,sustainability and technology.
Ubels's presentation also states that the use of IoT in buildings provides an abundance of choice.
He recommends taking a sensor approach but not allowing two-way communications between the sensors. “If you know that you want to record the temperature every five minutes,set it to send the data every five minutes,” commented Ubels.
“Don’t let the sensor ask another sensor every five minutes for a reading. There should be no two-way communications, it should just be set to do it.”
He also states that the sensors used must be future-proofed and upgradeable in order to remain a sustainable space.
Many presentations throughout the event talked about the smart workplace and how offices are beginning to change, with systems such as shared workplaces and hot-desking.
"If people learn about the building’sperformance, they connect to itmore and therefore work better." - David Schwarz, HUSH
Daphne Tomlinson, a senior research associate at Memoori Research, gave a review of market and technology trends for occupancy analytics and location-based solutions in smart offices, alongside information of how in-building technology is being driven by occupant’s expectation for more productive environments.
Elizabeth Nelson, co-founder of Smart Building Certification.org, spoke about the new initiative to commend real smart buildings which will officially launch next year. In her presentation,she stated that a building cannot be called smart just because it is packed with technology that is collecting data; it’s how the data is used that makes a building smart.
The Smart Building Certification has been created to award buildings that have the IT infrastructure in place to measure a building and its behaviour.
Nelson said: “We are awarding the first certifications of the Smart Building Certification next