Modern Building Services

18 MODERN BUILDING SERVICES MARCH 2023 FEATURE SMART BUILDINGS E very building has a purpose. Whether it’s the building you shop, work or socialise in. They make a difference to our lives every day. It’s no surprise then that we spend 90% of our time indoors. However, the very basis of how our buildings function depends on the safety, security, and well-being of the people that use them. The way we use our offices, for example; has massively evolved since the start of 2020. We have becomemore flexible, often only attending the office when there is a clear purpose and advantage in doing so. The building itself is no different, but we now need to evolve the way our buildings operate to work for our new requirements. Research fromMcKinsey Global Institute estimates that data and analytics could create value worth between $9.5 trillion and $15.4 trillion a year if embedded at scale, showing the true impact that siloes are having across industries. So, we need to start valuing and understanding our data. Only then canwe improve occupant safety and comfort, save on costs and achieve sustainability targets. The stairway to data value When we have data we can’t understand or contextualise, we may as well have no data at all. Siloed data is dumbing down our smart buildings, but the challenge is that we need to manage the combination of operating technology, bringing together multiple data sources and different systems together to drive value. Right now, the data from each of these point solutions is siloed and disconnected. This is preventing building managers, developers, and owners from seeing the bigger picture, limiting them to small, incremental changes that don’t help realise the full potential of their investment in smart. From here, it is then possible to move up the data value ladder, unlocking the true benefits of ‘smart’. On the surface level, data can be descriptive, telling us what is happening now. This insight then informs how we move up the levels; diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive and finally, the zenith of cognitive data where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation come into their own. Identify the link There needs to be a link between the building and the data, as it provides invaluable insights into how the building is used. You can take a snapshot of the energy in a building and understand its performance, but this won’t help until you have the context of other data, and how that influences the building. Understanding siloed data as a connected networkmeans we can approach each building differently, tomake recommendations that aremore energy efficient and cost saving. By connecting the siloes, we can enrich the data to provide the diagnostic data as well as the descriptive data that will help climb the stairway to value. By Mark Bouldin, Clean Air Expert at Johnson Controls Putting the value on data in smart buildings