Page 502 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

8 Conclusions

Intelligent buildings are becoming more common, more complex and provide the ability for
significantly reducing the environmental impact of our built infrastructure.

8.1 Vision

The ultimate vision of an intelligent building is one in which a very small group of individuals can
monitor, manage, diagnose (and sometimes correct) most building operational issues without ever
leaving their desks which are equipped with little more than a computer screen. Individuals given
the right tools have the ability to monitor the security, the temperature, the lighting, the occupancy,
the safety, the ventilation and the electrical consumption of the building. There is no longer a need
for a patrol guard to move through the building in order to investigate if all individual doors are
properly locked. As these systems become more trusted and more reliable the vision is that a smaller
group of people can manage a large building autonomously, reliably and with traceability. The
economies of reduced staffing, immediate response and operational statistics are significant. The
ability to perform maintenance on the basis of actual hours used or defects which have been
identified, will provide considerable savings. The ability to use electronic controls which ensure
smooth starting and stopping of all machines, the gradual activation of luminaires and the smooth
shutdown of luminaires all lead to significantly reduced operational failures and significantly
extended operational life thereby providing further economies.

8.2 Future Considerations

Key areas that need to be addressed to gain the full benefit of intelligent building include:

 Understanding the goal of design and operation of an intelligent building.
 Is it more important that the building be more efficient, i.e. that the operating costs are
reduced?
 Is it more important that the effectiveness of individual occupants in the building are put as the
most important objective?
 Adoption of an appropriate communications protocol to operate with each of the ICT sub‐
systems through cooperation between all of the design engineers.
 Visioning a greater benefit in all aspects will accrue if a single building can enjoy the benefits of
joining one building into multiple buildings thereby forming a community, a campus, or possibly
even a city.
 The provision and ability to communicate over a common IP infrastructure, is a mechanism by
which an intelligent building can be implemented. However, depending on the jurisdiction, there
may be a need that some of the systems require special considerations in order to comply with
all aspects of the building code, fire safety code or electrical code.
 Base building systems that are designed in a manner which permits their intercommunication
and which also allows for communication between the building and individual tenant
improvements.
Intelligent and sustainable buildings can form one of the pillars of a smart sustainable city. Buildings
are a major contributor to global GHG emissions and the implementation of intelligence within our
building stock can provide a method for reducing these emissions.

492 ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications