Most buildings nowadays implement Building Management Systems that results in efficient day to day operations and reduce operational cost. Building administrators or facilities manager uses Building Analytics to have a better understanding of the building system and have a smart analysis that makes use of machine learning algorithms and innovative visualizations.
What is Building Analytics?
Building Analytics provides insightful data and converts into actionable intelligence that can be used to optimize your facility’s energy performance. It is a combination of creating a complex system that requires a control system that is capable of handling the complexity and creating and collecting relatively large amounts of data about the operation, which requires advanced analysis in order to identify faults to proactively address building inefficiencies, and enabling you to identify and prioritize cost-saving opportunities, threats to occupant comfort and mitigate environmental vulnerability.
As you plan and make the budget for 2020, making an upgrade or a change in your building into an intelligent building should be considered by building owners and facility managers. Here are a few reasons why building analytics should be top of mind:
- Fault Detection
Fault Detection and Diagnostics, or FDD, is the process of identifying errors in physical systems while attempting to identify the source of the problem through crowdsourced data, as well as data from meters and sensors. Determining where in the system the fault occurs, isolating the error and classifying based on fault type, size and detection time thru rule-based algorithms and pattern recognition. Then asses and determine the fault’s impact on system performance based on different prioritization categories such as energy and water savings, occupants’ comfort levels, cost, and environmental impact. Instead of relying on monthly checkups, building analytics automatically analyzes this information at periodic intervals based on desired needs. As a basic example, if the temperature outside is high and cooling is off and there are no hot complaints, then the occupancy of the building is zero.
Monitoring the building’s system data and easily detect any system fault, can result to quickly respond to any concerns before they become more serious. Rather than allowing small issues to go unnoticed and worsen over time, either via computer controls or by dispatching a technician.
- Improve occupant comfort
By increasing comfort levels, building analytics help in reducing complaints from occupants and help increase the productivity of the employees making them more productive. Occupant’s profiles are monitored and used to optimize schedules, making weather logs and comparing outdoor temperature. Ensuring a smooth transition from unoccupied to occupied rooms, making the system adaptable to occupant’s preferences and deliver more occupant settings. As an example, utilizing thermostats in individual offices, accompanied by an occupancy sensor in order to avoid excessive heating or cooling when the room is vacant.
- Increase energy performance and reducing energy consumption
Thru building analytics, historical data such as weather logs, number of guests, and buildings energy usage was gathered and studied to predict the amount of energy produced at a particular time and to reduce energy waste by identifying inefficiencies in real-time. Devices that causing the energy bills can be pinpointed and corrected.
Schneider Electric’s studies made an example, how building Analytics can save energy cost :
- Create more environmentally friendly, high-performance buildings
The building sectors are considered as the largest single-energy use worldwide, it is also responsible for 19% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Energy efficiency improvements will result in greenhouse gas reductions and redefine the green building.
The green building industry generated $23.45 billion in GDP which represents 297,890 full-time jobs in 2014. This is more jobs than Canada’s oil and gas extraction, mining and forestry industries combined, which collectively employed approximately 270,450 workers in 2014.
Building analytics uses energy models to replicate the energy consumption of an existing building based on the building’s operation, utility bills, and normal weather data. This additional tool is used for conservation measures that can demonstrate potential energy savings by weighing actual energy and energy-cost values. It improves the performance of the building’s potential return on investments.
- Increase facility reliability and availability
Using historical data to describe how a piece of equipment normally operates and recognizing the pattern, continuously monitors its behavior in real-time and putting an alert when the operations differ from the historical norms, early detection of any abnormalities in the systems and avoiding worst defects. This allows your facilities to run more efficiently, they are less likely to break down and require repairs, which can be disruptive to a business’s day-to-day operations. Another advantage of data optimization through building analytics is automatic maintenance practices that improve operational efficiency and support capital planning through better visibility into equipment conditions and potential failure. For example, device-level monitoring can identify incorrect scheduling of a building automation system on specific devices, like lights, in order to avoid energy consumption off-hours.
- Increase in safety and security
Security is one of the top concerns for building owners. Theft and unwanted intruders can cause threats to the safety of the tenants and, it is a must to protect and keep the tenants far from harm inside the premisses. Security guards are effective, however, it will be costly having an additional overhead cost and few guards are not enough.
Digital building technology provides several ways to improve building security without giving much cost and less hassle to tenants and employees. Most examples are widely visible and available to most of the buildings around the globe. Closed-circuit television video surveillance (CCTV), Installing access controls to all areas of your building and giving personal entry cards to authorized individuals are most effective, cost-efficient ways to improve building security. By using these tools, especially technological advancement such as IOT (internet of things), which are common trends nowadays, the building administrator can have a real time data analytics and can access anywhere, even on their smartphones. They can have monitoring of their camera feeds to identify specific behavior patterns or suspicious activity. By bringing the most relevant details to the forefront, analytics alerts keep security focused and responsive.
Conclusion
Building managers and operators, faced many challenges on how they can run their building efficiently. Such as reducing operational cost by means of maximizing it’s resources such as energy. They can’t control the price but they can control the consumption by using building analytics as a tool. This can help monitor the operation, measure the health of the building and address the over consumption issues by this, managing the building smartly will be possible.
Have more questions about building analytics, we can help you. Contact us now.
Resources:
Photo credits by alexandrugogan.com/unsplash
Building Analytics Improve the efficiency, occupant comfort, and financial well-being of your building- https://download.schneider-electric.com/
Sectoral Trends in Global Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions – https://www.osti.gov
AR5 Climate Change 2014 – https://www.ipcc.ch/report
Green building in Canada, 2016 – https://www.cagbc.org/
Building Energy Management and Data Analytics – https://www.researchgate.net
10 Benefits of Using Smart Buildings – https://www.facilitiesnet.com
Building Management System – https://www.sciencedirect.com
Building Analytics Managed Services – https://www.se.com
Smart Offices:How Intelligent Building Solutions are Changing the Occupant Experience by Navigant Research – https://info.switchautomation.com/
Smart Building:Combining IOT and Analytics to Improve Facilities Management Operations – https://www.ibm.com