Consideration of Intelligent Building Management Systems - Term Paper Example

Building mаnаgеmеnt systеm Your name: Institution name: Introduction In the last one decade, intelligent buildings have become popular, and this have been driven by the need to reduce energy, have more reactive and safer buildings, and increase productivity (Dragoicea et el, 2013). Intelligent buildings integrate a lot of systems that were in the past isolated from each other, including life and fire safety, security, HVAC, and so forth. Intelligent buildings have become a trend of the next generation’s premises, which have been seen to facilitate intelligent control of the building to satisfy the changing need of people effectively. Since people spend 90 per cent of their life in buildings, a comfortable and healthy environment is important for individuals’ productivity, wellbeing, safety and sustainability through intelligent technologies. So far, the concept of intelligent building has been defined differently in a number of technical and academic literatures. For example, in the U.S., the Intelligent Building Institute has focused more on the technologies and their definition of intelligent building is a building that provides cost effective and productive environment through optimization of its four basic attributes that include services and management, structures systems, and inter relationship between these elements. While in the UK based European Intelligent Building Group has focused more on its end user satisfaction and it definition of intelligent building is that building that creates an environment which maximizes the effectiveness of the building’s occupants and enables efficient management of resources with minimum time costs of facilities and hardware. By using different definition of intelligent buildings, Weiss (2006) has defined an intelligent building as a building that is designed and constructed on an appropriate selection of quality environment modules to meet the end user’s requirements by mapping to the appropriate building systems and facilities to achieve long term building value. List and discuss the security managers’ consideration of Intelligent Building Management systems. Security The building automation sector is now at a point where there is a reasonable and legitimate concern regarding the security of building control systems, particularly in intelligent buildings where technology is being used (Ivory and Alderma, 2005). There have been stories in the news with regard to malicious cyber-attack on companies, internet sites and government networks and there have been a lot of question to what such cyber-attacks would mean would meant for building intelligent building control systems, occupants, building operations and owners (Patrascu and Dragoicea, 2014). The apprehension has been amplified because there have been an increased penetration of information technology infrastructure in building control systems and a greater interconnection and integration of intelligent building control systems and greater interconnection and integration of building controls with other information systems (Ivory and Alderma, 2005). The vulnerability of intelligent building have been seen to extend to the smart grid where two way communication is being implemented between building and the grid, and this has impacted on the corporate business systems. Nowadays, the security concern is about network security and less on physical security, although the two are related. Security is a leading issue in the intelligent building as person seek to maintain the control guard property both intellectual and physical. With security being the main concern for most people, the focus is to prevent viruses, cyber attacks, hacking and so forth (Gassmann, 2005). As a range of technology have increased in this industry it has become even more critical to ensure that systems and devices installed in these buildings can work well on a resilient network with appropriate secure data centres and connectivity, and appropriate firewalls. Over the year’s security have been a big concern in intelligent buildings for many organisation. Once stand-alone systems, systems in intelligent buildings are now networked together including remote access servers, IT data centres, and public utilities (Kastner, 2006). A lot of proprietary technologies have been phased out in favour of standard solutions. This has resulted in the growth in the use of open protocols. Therefore, in order to mitigate the security risks, best practices for securing system should be applied. Reliability When the design of system used in the intelligent building has been made, these system are required to meet high performance, and to have the following features: full functioned, technologically advanced, simple operations and practical function, stable and reliable; The design of the system in the intelligent building should highlights the idea of respect for nature, people oriented and sustainable development, and the overall design goal should establish standard, modernized and open system to meet current and future development needs (Matthews, 2005). In addition, intelligent buildings have continued to rely on systems that are more dynamic, complex, and distributed than earlier technologies (KEIL, 2008). The design, development and implementation of information system. Intelligent building technology is found to be incorporated in many buildings, some of which contain classified materials, premise and other assets, with broader integration and incorporation into traditional electrical, electronic, pneumatic and mechanical systems (KEIL, 2008). Nevertheless intelligent buildings are still at an early stage of development, but their feasibility of such solutions should be considered from the onset, as information control, privacy and security has often been neglected (Ivory and Alderma, 2005). These systems have been found to be integrated through open and common data communication hardware and protocols that leaves building vulnerable to both internal and external risks and threats. System reliability has been found to be a major challenge in intelligent buildings (Dragoicea et el, 2013). An intelligent building system that is unreliable is seen as a major source of end user frustration, they are also seen to be expensive (Gassmann, 2005). Avoiding the system downtime and the cost of downtime make-up more than 40 per cent of the total cost of ownership for information technology systems (Patrascu and Dragoicea, 2014). Unfortunately, with large components in current large scale intelligent building systems, failure in these systems have become the norm rather than the exception. Therefore, the key to developing a more reliable intelligent building system is to first understand what make the system used in the smart building unreliable. We know system reliability can be a key concern because the embarrassing basic attributes of failures in intelligent systems. Therefore, before a security manager embarking on a lengthy and expensive development or maintenance restructuring program, it is important to identify the most problematic areas in the system. Integration Intelligent building’s enable and integrate connectivity within the majority of a building’s equipment and plant systems, including security systems. In the past two decade or so, intelligent buildings have become a significant factor in the build, design, maintenance, operation of commercial buildings (KEIL, 2008). Such systems have become popular, and have been driven by the need to save energy, provide more safer and reactive facilities, and reduce operational costs. Like other elements of building infrastructures upon which security managers relies, intelligent buildings have been taken for granted, and only come to mind when they don’t work properly. Intelligent building comprise many interactive features, so there’s a lot of scope for issues to arise (Kastner, 2006). Apparatus for telephonic and radio voice communication, command, control and monitoring functions, drainage and fencing together with gas, power and water suppliers can all vie for space on the smart building. Data for customer information, fire detection, CCTV cameras and intruder alarms system can take up capacity on wide area or Local area telecommunication networks. A lot of these systems have to be designed so that they can remain operational when the intelligent building or its power supply is operating in degraded modes, for example during maintenance activities. Therefore, these systems should be compatible with the information technology infrastructure and with each other, too. Thus each system in intelligent building should be designed with not just its own functionality, but also be designed to operate with other systems, and their interactions. In addition, human factors should also be considered when these systems are being designed to work with intelligent buildings, to control the risk of operator error, and health and safety, environmental impact and sustainability have to be considered in all phased of asset life. When modification to existing intelligent building is planned, constructability reviews should account for the extra dimension of stage works, in order to minimise the effect on intelligent building services. Discussing this issue of system integration in intelligent building in more broader terms will bring up the importance of ensuring all intelligent building systems are integrated as possible (KEIL, 2008). There are a lot of solutions that are available to intelligent buildings to improve efficiency. Currently, the difficult part is not to find a means of improving the effectiveness of intelligent buildings but rather deciding which system to employ and how to make sure these systems are consistency across the intelligent building. Rather than using various disparate systems to accomplish effectiveness, a security manager in charge of intelligent building should employ few systems as possible that are integrated tightly. This usually start with finding a robust system that will be used to manage the intelligent building. Therefore, when system manager is able to view every aspect of systems from one place, they will have succeeded. To some extent, there is a difference between system integration and system communication. It is one thing to allow communication between two different systems, and it is entirely another thing to fully integrate the two systems. The main differences being the number of communication points between different systems used in intelligent buildings, or rather the variety in the information that is based between the two systems employed in intelligent buildings. A well-integrated intelligent system will allow for drilling sown into data across different functions. Safety assurance Safety techniques are deployed, to ensure there is compatibility of the respective system employed in the intelligent buildings. Standards regimes should be comprehensive but should also address the level of performance to be achieved without specifying how systems standards have to be delivered, because sometime information system interfaces are found to be dependent on the specific nature of each intelligent building (DeBruin, Campbell and Dutta, 2013). Therefore, the system that has to be adopted from intelligent system integration need to support and be supported. Therefore, focussing on how individual deliver systems integration in intelligent building designs will hopefully not only deliver good things such as being on time and on budget, making a profit and winning repeat business, but will also result in happy customers whose train services haven’t been delayed Power consumption Buildings nowadays have been found to consumer about 50 per cent of the total energy use, building have also been found to be responsible for the same percentage of carbon emission or greenhouse gas emissions, and have been seen to account for about 80 per cent of the electricity usage. In order to address the need for environmental concerns and energy security there is the need to reduce energy use in buildings (KEIL, 2008). One of the greatest opportunities to address these need is to accelerate the development of building energy systems that can improve buildings energy efficiency and automatically respond to high electricity prices by managing electric loads during operations. In recent years, energy efficiency in intelligent building has been a relatively low perceived opportunity and low priority to investors and owners. However, with dramatic increase in awareness and increase in energy use concerns, and the advances in energy efficiency and cost effective technologies is fast becoming part of intelligent building constructions, facilities operations and management strategy. This concept of energy efficiency in intelligent building is also making inroads into the residential housebuilding sectors. The need for robust characterization of energy use in intelligent buildings has gained popularity in light of the growing number of developments and projects addressing this topic. Considering that intelligent buildings with different functionalities have found to have different energy use. Therefore it is important for system managers to carry out characterization of contributors to their energy use (Matthews, 2005). For example, in industrial building energy consumption is associated with operation of infrastructures that is dedicated to production processes, whereas in residential buildings the energy use is due to the indoor services that is given to the people associated to comfort . Depending on the intelligent building, different electrical equipment may be used with different purposes. For example, for providing comfort in a home. On the other hand, the operation of these electrical equipment could be independent of the behaviour and participation of the occupants, for example in the context of an office where there are rules and schedules (Arkin and Paciuk, 2004). Whatever the case, operation pattern of equipment in the intelligent building must be included in the final system responsible for estimating the consumption of the intelligent building. Energy consumption can also be contributed due to the behaviour of the resident and this is seen as a critical point in every intelligent building energy management (Arkin and Paciuk, 2004). This is due to the occupant behaviour sometimes can be difficult to be controlled and characterised due to its dynamic and uncertainty. Depending on the intelligent building context, the impact of behaviour of people on the total energy consumption is different. For instance, in residential flats the impact of occupants in the energy consumed is one of the greatest and this is followed by the environmental conditions (Arkin and Paciuk, 2004). However, in intelligent buildings, the electrical consumption due to the equipment and appliances working for such objective is the main contributor to the total energy consumed. Therefore, energy efficiency should be a consideration when developing intelligent buildings. Interference with Other Systems A lot of wireless technology rely on the bi-directional wireless transmission. In passive systems, the devices emit signals that induces a current to power the transmitter, on the other hand, in active systems broadcasts their presence without an induced current. Because of the used of wireless transmission in systems employed in intelligent buildings, it is important to consider the risk of interference with other technologies in the building. This is usually true where classes of technology are employed and where the consequences of interference with other equipment and systems is likely to be serious. Two classes of interference that must be considered by the system manager: firstly, those interference that prevent correct information from being received and/or transmitted and as a result reduce the performance of wireless systems that have been deployed in the intelligent building; and secondly the risks that signals from one equipment will be interpreted incorrectly as valid data by another system. The places where cross interference can occur is between systems employed and wireless local or wide area networks 0r personal area network such as Bluetooth and hen only when devices share common or closely adjacent frequency bands. Therefore, in designing a house inferences should be considered at all the time. Energy Harvesting Capabilities Intelligent building management system security (iBMS) is a new concern for many firms. Once proprietary, stand along system, iBMS are now networked to many systems including remote access servers, IT data centers and public utilities. Many proprietary technologies have been done away with in favour of stand solutions. This has contributed to growth in the use of open protocols. While these new innovations have been found to offer real benefits to intelligent building management system security, there usage require careful assessment of their impact on security. Building in Australia have been found to consume the total electricity that is being generated in Australia. Commercial buildings account for over half of this electricity usage, and their share of energy consumption has been projected to increase compared to residential buildings, transportation, and industry (DeBruin, Campbell and Dutta, 2013). Furthermore, commercial buildings have become mixed use, that is, they now house both human occupants and significant energy consuming equipment such as monitors, desktop, servers, printers and computers. Therefore, a modern mixed used building will typically have four major energy consuming sub-systems: lighting, HVAC, IT equipment and miscellaneous plug load devices (DeBruin, Campbell and Dutta, 2013). Therefore, the future of intelligent building should havest its own energy usage, and this should be among the consideration that should be considered when designing a intelligent building. The energy derived from the environment is freely available but comes with a cost; it is a low level and is often quite variable (DeBruin, Campbell and Dutta, 2013). This gives the power management of energy-harvesting systems several challenges (DeBruin, Campbell and Dutta, 2013). The power manager has to collect this energy and boost the voltage up to levels needed for the electronic system it is supporting, while using as little of that energy as possible and providing system-monitoring capabilities Conclusion Intelligent buildings are building wide control systems that control, connect and monitor a building’s system, subsystems, plant and equipment (Ivory and Alderma, 2005). There is no single definition for Intelligent buildings, although Institute defons Cerdá has defined Intelligent buildings as ä system that support the flow of information throughout the building, offering advanced service of telecommunications and business automation (Matthews, 2005), allowing furthermore automatic control, maintenance, monitoring management of the different services or subsystems of the building in an integrated and optimum way, remote and/or local, and it designed is sufficient flexible to make possible in a economical and simple way the implementation of future systems.” References Arkin. H and Paciuk. M. (2004). Evaluating intelligent buildings according to level of service systems integration,‖ Autom. Constr., vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 471–479. DeBruin.S, Campbell,.B and DuttaP. 2013. An energy-harvesting energy meter architecture. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems,SenSys. Ivory, C and Alderma, N. 2005. Can project management learn anything from studies of failure in complex systems? Project Management Journal,36,5-16. KEIL, M. 2008. Pulling the plug: Software project management and the problem of project escalation.MIS Quarterly,December,421-447 Weiss G. (2006). Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Project Management Journal,36, 5-16 Dragoicea, M., Bucur, L and Patrascu, M. (2013). "A Service Oriented Simulation Architecture for Intelligent Building Management". Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Exploring Service Science 1.3. LNBIP 143: 14–28. Patrascu, M and Dragoicea, M. (2014). "Integrating Services and Agents for Control and Monitoring: Managing Emergencies in Smart Buildings". Service Orientation in Holonic and Multi-Agent Manufacturing and Robotics. Studies in Computational Intelligence Volume 544: 209–224. Matthews, H. S. (2005). Intelligent light control using sensor networks,‖ in Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems , 2005, pp. 218– 229. Gassmann O. H. (2005). Sensors in Intelligent Buildings , vol. 2. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH, 2001, pp. 307–397. Kastner, W. G. (2006). Communication Systems for Building Automation and Control,‖ Proc. IEEE, vol. 93, no. 6, pp. 1178. Read More