BUILDING AS A NETWORK: SYSTEMS, SUB-SYSTEMS AND THEIR INTERDEPENDENCIES

Abstract

All commercial class office buildings today have physical building systems such as Heating, Ventilating and Air-Conditioning (HVAC), Lighting, Life Safety etc. co-existing with Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and networking technologies such as Internet Protocol (IP) networking, collaboration tools like e-mail, scheduling etc. Both of these seemingly disparate types of building systems are critical to the successful operation of the building, yet often operate in “silos” and have little/ no influence or interaction with one another. A way to help enterprise to achieve lower operating expenses (OPEX) is to reduce energy usage and improve employee productivity. By adopting the analogy of a “network” for the building, the silo-ed systems whether physical or IT can be viewed from a single lens on the same plane. This will then form a basis to attempt various interactions and influence across the different systems and their associated domains. This report describes an approach towards “Energy Efficient Smart Buildings” through looking at the building as a network of various systems. The report aims to describe the various systems of a commercial class office building in detail, and describe the case scenarios of interdependencies between them through an integrated building network infrastructure. The report concludes that there are practical and theoretical implications of the research towards lowering OPEX for enterprises and showing the networked centric approach towards achieving this. However, the report recognises the factors that may hinder buildings from becoming smarter in the local context as well; a lack of government incentive for builder’s focus on life-cycle performance, owners’ lack of perception of the direct value of a networked building, and the construction process which is slow in integrating building systems’ vendors at the pre-construction stage.