An Introduction to IoT and Smart Buildings

Smart buildings use Internet of Things (IoT) devices, sensors, and software to monitor and control various building functions to optimize the building’s environment and operations. They improve building efficiencies, lower costs, and improve occupant satisfaction. What constitutes a smart building? How many IoT sensors are required, and how many applications are needed to determine the degree of building smartness?

Internet of Things for Smart Buildings is a comprehensive guide for those who want to build either a greenfield smart building (new) or retrofit a built environment. Almost every function within a building is now a candidate for building smart building applications and IoT devices. Whether you start with one function or multiple functions, this book will review the many opportunities and technologies used to build a smart building. Edge routers, numerous IoT sensors and devices, the various connection options available, and the software required both locally and via the cloud to make it all work together seamlessly will be discussed.

Due to the various technologies, and the number of vendors and products involved, smart building projects can be complex and sometimes overwhelming. Smart building stacks can be used to map building products, IoT devices, and technologies for comparison or to identify gaps in a vendor’s product or from a customer’s requirement perspective. Complete with product, solution, and technology descriptions, examples, and recommendations, this book will help you decide which projects are right to build your smart building, and show you how to develop your technology and business stack.

This chapter will lay out the basics by defining what a smart building is and the contribution of the IoT to smart buildings. We’ll start by giving an example of a person’s typical day working in a smart building and the many smart features and benefits they may come across. We’ll review traditional building issues and the benefits of developing a smart building solution to resolve these issues.

To better understand how the industry got here, we will provide a basic history and evolution of building control systems, intelligent buildings, and the IoT. We will discuss the many benefits of a smart building for building owners, operators, occupants, and the community. Finally, we will introduce how smart buildings contribute to smart cities.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• What a smart building is with an example of a day in a smart building
• What the IoT is
• How smart buildings and IoT came together
• The benefits of having a smart building
• A review of traditional building issues and how smart buildings solve these
• Why we need smart buildings to have a smart city
• The history of building control systems and evolution to smart buildings