Month: April 2018

 Managing any building efficiently is a complex task, involving number of equipment, systems and subsystems. Opt for Building Management System (BMS) that ensures that all building services can be monitored and controlled centrally. Apart from smooth operations, a centralise BMS platform ensures that the facility management team is gainfully deployed, thereby reducing dependence on costly manpower. Multiple facilities can be monitored and controlled from a central location. A centralise platform for your BMS is the gateway for a smart and sustainable building helping you to save time and money, provide constant access to your system, and ensure better security.

An integrated Building Management System

BMS systems are “Intelligent” microprocessor based controller networks installed to monitor and control a buildings technical systems and services such as air conditioning, ventilation, lighting and hydraulics. BMS is to connect all of the technology in a property which monitors utilities, electronic devices and mechanical equipment. Traditional building management systems typically have stand-alone applications with separate monitoring and control stations for HVAC Controls, energy metering and power management, central plant equipment and lighting. While each application is beneficial on its own, the real power lies in managing them as one, intelligent solution.

The real power of an integrated centralised platform

A centralized BMS will help you save time and money, provide constant access to your system, and ensure better security.

• Auto Scheduling – An integrated BMS provides the ability to auto-schedule any equipment or sub-system. This means that standard, day-to-day functions need not be remembered or done by human intervention. This saves manpower resources and also improves productivity and reduces human errors by automating mundane tasks. The system also maintains a log of maintenance history and scheduling events which can be used to retrospectively analyze system issues.
• Real Time Alarms – A single sharing BMS platform allows you to create functional, operational and maintenance related schedules and rules in the system. The system will detect any schedule or rule violations in real time and generate automated alarms, which are displayed as on-screen visual alerts or sent as an SMS or email, if required. The system displays alarm details along with current system conditions, time of occurrence and status of alarms.
• Ease of use –BMS makes the task of managing any site very simple and enjoyable. It removes the complexity from the routine tasks, and allows you to focus on the relevant, high-priority issues, while simultaneously ensuring that regular operations run efficiently.
• Central Monitoring And Control – Managing any building efficiently is a complex task, involving number of equipment, systems & sub-systems. The BMS ensures that all building services can be monitored and controlled centrally. Apart from smooth operations, this ensures that the facility management team is gainfully deployed, thereby reducing dependence on costly manpower. Multiple facilities can be monitored and controlled from a central location.
• Optimization – BMS provides integrated monitoring and control of all equipment and devices in central building services, such as HVAC, thereby ensuring synchronized working of different components of the sub-systems to deliver optimized performance. For example, to ensure that the floor temperature is maintained at 24°C, the iBMS will automatically monitor parameters, such as, Return Air Temperature, Supply Water Temperature, Return Water Temperature, etc.
• Interoperability – BMS is compliant with most industry standard protocols. Integration with legacy and third party systems is easy. Even those components that use proprietary protocols can be integrated through drivers customized for the purpose.
• Reports – A BMS platform help to analyze your equipment’s operational information as well as energy usage over any specified time period. Data is collated and analysed against historical and current trends. Discrepancies, anomalies and possible improvements are presented in usable and actionable forms.
• Comfort Control-A building management system allows for regular maintenance and fine-tuning of a property’s heat. This means that business owners and managers of residential homes can ensure maximum comfort for residents and staff members by maintaining a steady temperature. This will reduce the risk of overheating or overcooling while still keeping overall energy costs under control.
• Accurate Reporting Metrics-By having constant access to the energy usage statistics, business owners and building managers can quickly and easily create accurate financial reports and set budgets based on the information from previous quarters.

Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) promise increased insight, enhanced customer satisfaction, and greater efficiency. Along with powerful business impacts, IoT is expected to have staggering economic impact. To exploit fully the benefits of IoT, potential problems should be determined in advance in the cyber threat landscape. To ensure strong security for IoT and IIoT, organisations would be wise to implement several best practices. The first step towards securing IoT is to raise awareness of the threat and ensure it is considered at every point in the infrastructure. It is vital to secure the system to protect your business data.

Transition to a New IIoT Infrastructure
There is a lot of hype about the IIoT and many organisations want to leverage the benefits it promises. However, for many organisations, the path to technological adoption seems unclear, and some still question if IIoT will ever happen. Fortunately, with current and emerging offerings, organisations can actually take full advantage of IIoT today. Before making the leap, though, they should recognise that legacy devices are still in use. Planning and patience are required as you move forward with an IIoT solution for your organisation.

The best practices for sustainable and reliable IoT infrastructure
Securing an IoT infrastructure requires a rigorous security-in-depth strategy. This strategy requires you to secure data in the cloud, protect data integrity while in transit over the public internet, and securely provision devices. Device provisioning is the process of attaching a certificate to the device identity.Device identity (or in short – device ID) is similar to user identity but is used to uniquely identify a specific device.Each layer builds greater security assurance in the overall infrastructure.

Device security – As a best practice, hardening the end-point security likely means adopting an approach that requires attackers to circumvent multiple obstacles to protect the device and its data from unauthorized access and use. Some devices or pieces of equipment might operate continuously unattended, and therefore not subject to the security implied by frequent, direct observation of third parties. Making these devices tamper-proof or tamper-evident might be advantageous because this type of endpoint hardening can help block potential intruders from reaching data, the report says. It might also defend against a hacker or other cybercriminal buying and then weaponing devices.

A trained team – All users need to be train on best practices and updated on a regular basis. While people may not intentionally mean to cause problems, those who are not immersed in the information technology world may not understand how to deal with threats appropriately. Train them, too, on what to do if they think there may be a security issue. Keep Up To Date When software and infrastructure are not updated; your network infrastructure can fail.

Infrastructure– Developers and customers need secure and reliable. IoT infrastructure, internal network segmentation enable monitoring, inspection, and policy enforcement based on the activity at various points within the infrastructure. A fast and synchronized response to IoT threats is delivered by the Security firewalls integrated defenses and the correlation of IoT security incidents and continuous threat intelligence. Moreover  advanced anti-malware, SSL inspection, application control, URL filtering, sandboxing, and additional security controls in the firewall can be applied to protect IoT communications.

Standards-As the Internet of Things evolves, standards will play an increasing role in enabling companies to accelerate their time to market and maximise their market size. Standards make it easier to integrate products with existing web services (such as social networks and online retailers), exchange data with other devices, and play a part in innovative new services too.

The construction industry has no other alternative than catching up with digital trends disruption this segment. Big data, the innovative tech has a lot to offer the building environment. Big data is already affecting every area of business activity including real estate, construction and the built environment. Surveying in the construction landscape can benefit from big data with its various capabilities to disrupt this segment. Surveyors need to keep abreast of developments in big data field and they need to embrace new skill sets if the relevance of the profession is to be maintained and strengthened in the future.  

The surveying landscape in the construction industry

Building survey is the starting point for initial planning proposals, for the diagnosis and documentation of building damages, for the creation of objectives catalogues, for the detailed design of renovation and conversion measures and for ensuring fulfilment of building legislation, particularly by change of use and refitting. The importance of surveying determines the viability of the project. Construction and building, big data already exists in all the plans and records of anything that was ever built.. The variety of inputs in big data allows better levels of certainty about status reports and forecasts. The analytics can provide helpful indications of levels of risk before a threshold is exceeded and an alert generated. They also offer insights that traditional systems simply cannot.

The potential disruptive impact of big data and digital technologies on traditional surveying practice

Surveyors’ implication in intelligent building

Surveyors need to keep abreast of modern building management, which is changing intelligent buildings sector with potential of generating large quantities of digital data from sensors and other diverse sources. Today computer servers are the controlling elements in heating ventilation, air conditioning, lighting and metering systems.

Data driven decision-making leads to higher asset utilisation, reduced capital and operational cost structure for surveyors. As one of the globally recognised professions in constructing, managing and valuing real estate, understanding this new operating environment is vital to surveyors who are providing informed advice to commissioners, occupiers, investors and lenders. The rapid developments in building design, management and maintenance are drawn together through the BIM enabled procurement process, creates the opportunity for surveyors to provide enhanced client services.

Surveyors’ implications in new smart cities

Smart Cities prioritise different aspects of smart enabling systems and are largely emerge as real estate enterprises. The success of a smart city relies on the ability of meeting the objectives
set out at the initial start. Surveyors have an important role in rendering a smart city successful. Surveyors using big data innovations can provide added value knowledge in projects. The role of the surveyor in these new environments is to understand each city’s uniqueness and its market implications. In the city, data comes from many sources. Big data technologies, used successfully, allow the city government to capture, store, analyse and act on big data for the good of citizens and other stakeholders. The focus is not on the individual buildings that make up the city, but on people, infrastructure, and environment.

The adoption of smart technologies to deliver buildings and infrastructure will have a transforming effect on the construction sector, which will favour surveying professionals who have developed this expertise.

The hot topic of today, it is “Internet of Things” (IoT) and “Smart Homes”. KNX association has recently launched IoT solutions, bringing the latest innovations. IoT is the new development boost in connecting KNX Ecosystem to the Internet. KNX now has embedded IoT protocols. Interesting possibilities of KNX IoT revolves around the compatibility of the devices and the possibility to communicate with each other.

Internet of Things at KNX

KNX IoT comes with an additional proprietary, an automation solutions making it possible to exchange data between the installed components. Different manufacturing components can communicate with each other through the Internet, creating a more connected and integrated system. To ensure compatibility in the changing IoT world, leveraging standards ensures that the value of KNX products is increased and provide long-term support. KNX has the advantage of a large KNX install base, which allows drawing on a wealth of experience that will help successfully extending the KNX integration into the Internet of Things.

From KNX city to IoT city Interconnected properties

Expendability with existing framework:  The latest KNX IoT city is an extendable IPv6 compliant physical media extending its distributed reliable interoperability up to cloud. KNX solution will be extendable with multiple IPv6 compliant physical media, on the other hand how KNX plans to extend its distributed reliable interoperability up to the cloud.All of this taking into account the results of the joint work.

KNX Secure panels: From a concept to reality, KNX solution presents the first available KNX Secure devices, which is unrivalled in the world of smart homes and smart buildings. Both KNX IP Secure and KNX Data Secure set up a protecting RF/TP networks, also communication between KNXnet/IP devices, for a protection across the board.

The KNX RF panel: KNX RF combines all of these features and makes them available to you! The KNX RF Panel impressively demonstrates a selection of available KNX RF devices, which will turn your home into a smart home without the need for additional cabling.

KNX IoT; a Secure IoT Building Automation Platform

The KNX IoT city is the results of the jointly elaborated work towards a common unique and secure building automation IoT framework serving the needs of multiple building automation solutions.

The solution KNX IoT

• Realised via gateways between the KNX network and the world of internet, on one side operation panels, building management, smartphone and others communicate via web services with the gateway. Thus, the app of a web client is able to search data in the web service gateway with unified text telegrams and to transfer them.
• By KNX IoT, the smart home comes closer to the virtual world of the internet. It becomes simpler to use data thereof for automated functions, to present values and states of a KNX installation via the internet and to evaluate them. Sensor values and consumption data of energy usage can help to optimise the energy management.
• KNX IoT city can serve to extend classic KNX installations with a field bus IPv6 network, allowing constrained devices to exchange KNX standardised data on the Thread wireless mesh network, behind the Thread border router making the connection to the KNX classic world.
• Unified and suitable set of IEEE specifications to allow all future IP based building automation products to share a common secure IPv6 compliant infrastructure. In this way, building automation products integrated into IP networks by mechanisms familiar to the IT administrator.