How Smart Building Solutions can Catalyze the Sustainable Built Environment

The Growing Urban Population and the Need for Smart Buildings

According to the UN’s World Population Prospects 2022 report, the world’s population is expected to reach 8 billion by the end of this year. An indispensable part of this growth is linked with an increasing pace of urban development. Ensuring access to resources, education, employment, and social services indisputably calls for the development of urban spaces. That said, this transition does not have to take a toll on the natural environment. By levering the potential of technological advancement, we can meet our urban needs while maintaining an ecological balance.

Balancing Urban Development with Environmental Sustainability

The goal of achieving that balance is one of the promises of smart buildings.  Against the background of increasing global temperatures, sustainable design of buildings with modern technological integration for user interface and building operations for reduced carbon footprint are becoming extremely important. The built world is evolving rapidly, and considering the pace of technological advancement and its integration in our lives, IoT will soon become an inseparable part of the buildings we live, work and spend time in. Essentially, smart building technology is the key to improved performance, resilience and controlled built environment.

However, it is no longer enough for our smart buildings to be sustainable and efficient – they must also be healthy.  As the world continues its recovery from the global pandemic, people and businesses now have a better understanding needed to accelerate climate-conscious solutions that ensure environmental sustainability, economic development and human wellbeing. Organizations are questioning their business-as-usual attitude and looking for a recovery to a new normal. Among the issues gaining traction is the need to have healthy buildings.

Healthy buildings are no longer optional.  Since humans spend more than 90% of our time indoors, maintaining a healthy indoor environment has become critical. Continuous air quality monitoring to maintain the required concentration levels is becoming important. Sustainability goals like these can be achieved seamlessly through smart building solutions that can achieve healthy buildings and so much more.  Those solutions can take the shape of many forms, however.

Healthy Buildings: A New Standard for Smart Buildings

Now bring IoT into the fold.  Smart buildings can reduce energy/carbon emissions and even achieve zero-carbon certifications by using IoT technology that utilizes hardware, software, and connectivity to manage environmental quality and electromechanical systems like HVAC, lighting, security, air quality, irrigation, etc. By analyzing how to optimize energy use throughout a building, owners can determine the best course of action to reduce emissions and lower their carbon footprint while providing their building occupants a healthy environment

Gone are the days of an engineer sitting in front of a building automation system terminal and making changes manually.  With today’s technology, software algorithms and machine intelligence analyze a dizzying amount of sensor data from all kinds of loads, deciding in fractions of a second how each piece of equipment should respond.  Within a smart building, an IoT platform provides energy and indoor environmental analytics on usage, along with indicators on ways to improve the building’s overall sustainability.  Today’s systems self-tune and account for indoor air quality, system status, weather, occupancy and operational/mechanical variations. 

The backbone for achieving a tech-enabled building is the data gathered from various building systems and instruments.  This data  is analyzed, optimized and visualized to provide real-time insights on energy use, thermal comfort, indoor air quality and security systems. Integrating the sensors, equipment, hardware, and software during building design is obviously the path of least resistance.  But existing buildings need not despair – a wide array of IoT sensors, meters, communication devices, and central data collectors are available on the market for retrofit.  All this hardware feeds into the cloud and software to make sense of the data, recommend action (or take it automatically), and optimize how the building utilizes its equipment. 

The Financial Benefits of Investing in Smart Buildings

However, you don’t need to create smart buildings out of the goodness of your heart.  It also makes good financial sense.  Multiple published studies have shown that sustained energy savings can result in significant increases in the value of a building.  The benefits of smart buildings include the ability to use data for quality monitoring, address problems before they turn into crises, simulate the environment to your preferences, and reduce energy consumption by 10% to 15% In addition, catching small problems before they become big problems and extending the lifespan of very expensive equipment all positively impact the bottom line. 

Boiling down all the functionality, we are left with something called a building operating system (BOS).  A BOS adds a layer of applications and data exchange on top of the traditional building management system (BMS).  The current transition from BMS to BOS shows that there is no doubt that the demand for smart buildings will grow. Achieving a smart building might seem like a challenge but the key lies in identifying your priorities, having access to reliable data, and knowing who has the expertise to make it a reality.

The expertise of GORD’s Advisory team with vast experience in sustainable built environment design implementation and management can help integrate smart building controls and latest cutting-edge technologies, thus ensures that the smart buildings are not only energy efficient and environmentally friendly but also aligned with clients’ ESG objectives. Through the use of precise simulation tools can help optimize building performance, providing data-driven insights that lead to reduced operational costs and enhanced occupant comfort and well-being. This holistic approach enables clients to achieve their sustainability goals, enhance their corporate reputation, and ensure long-term operational resilience.
Celebrating its 40-year anniversary in 2024, Yardi® develops industry-leading software for all types and sizes of real estate companies across the world. With over 9,500 employees in 40 offices throughout North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia, Yardi is working with our clients to drive significant innovation in the real estate industry.

Want to know more about smart meters and smart building solutions? Listen to Zaki Mohammed et Christy Canon on AEE’s Podcast plein d'énergie. This article was written by and published in August 2024.