Construction teams planning projects now should be looking to integrate sensor and communications technologies to enable the smart cities of the future, according to a report by the Smart Cities Council.
A smart city is defined as one that uses ICT to enhance its livability, workability and sustainability by collecting data from multiple sensors, and communicating it using wired or wireless networks and analysing it with software to understand what is happening now and what is likely to happen in future.
The Smart Cities Readiness Guide, complied in collaboration with US contractor Bechtel and IT heavyweights Cisco, IBM and Microsoft, claims that buildings integrated with a host of smart sensors, connected to smart management systems, can control their utilities, ambient temperature, security systems, entry and exit points, as well as fire and life safety systems, from a single automated operations centre to provide complete situational awareness.
“Smart technologies can deliver operational cost savings of 10-15% a year with as little as 2% extra capital cost for the sensors and related equipment, which can mean a considerable payback on projects.”
Jim Denton Brown, Bechtel
“Smart technologies are one of the clear business imperatives emerging now and into the future, it’s going to become a basic requirement and contractors need to understand that these systems can save you tremendous money and resources,” said Jim Denton Brown, manager of planning at Bechtel. “It’s been shown that smart technologies can deliver operational cost savings of 10-15% a year with as little as 2% additional capital cost for the sensors and related equipment, which can mean a considerable payback on projects.”
Given that around 40% of all energy in cities is used by buildings for tasks such as heating, cooling and lighting, it could also have a major environmental impact, said the report.
Smart sensor technology is most suitable for very large buildings, for example an airport terminal or a major port facility with utility systems at disparate locations, where connecting them back to a single interface can enable greater understanding and control. And it can deliver city-wide benefits when data from individual buildings is combined to drive further efficiencies, for example a development like
Canary Wharf could use smart data to control a district heating system to distribute the exact amount of heat required by each premises in real time.
For teams designing projects now, incorporating smart technologies should be relatively simple, said Denton Brown: “You’re dealing with the same systems you have in any building, lighting, heating, cooling etc, but you are adding a layer of intelligent sensors that communicate data, over a wired or wireless network, to a central control point where you apply the software for analytics. This can be done with no human interface, for example ambient temperatures can be registered across the building and adjusted in real time by a machine.
“The amount of data that can be handled these days is astonishing, the technology is cheap to apply, there’s lot competition between software vendors and good support,” he added.
