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Facilities Management
Converge & Conquer
7/1/2008
Recently, in fact, adding even more "smarts" to building management has become a priority for academic institutions. "Because universities have been operating for such a long time, many have buildings that have never had any type of intelligent monitoring system," notes Eric Miller, VP of software solutions for Itron, a provider of solid-state utility meters and data collection/ communication systems.
How 'Intelligent'?
While there has indeed been movement toward making campus edifices smarter, the term "intelligent building" remains imprecise. The term first applied to intelligent control of heating and air conditioning systems. Typically, conventional buildings house thermostats and timers that are limited in that they must be set to heat or cool, and offer no room for accommodation of factors such as weather or even the collective body heat generated by the individuals in a room. Intelligent buildings, however, contain sensors that not only automatically switch the system from heating to cooling, but also can heat and cool different parts of a building simultaneously.
To take advantage of such features, sensors need to be stationed throughout a structure, and in numerous locations. They then collect information about a building's climate and transmit it via a common network to a central console that determines what changes need to be made. To move information from place to place, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers developed the BACnet standard, a networking protocol designed specifically to meet the communication needs of building automation and control systems for applications such as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning control; lighting; access control; and fire detection systems. The protocol enables automated equipment performing various monitoring functions to exchange information, regardless of the particular building service it is responsible for. As a result, the BACnet protocol may be used by head-end computers (machines designed to run facilities functions such as collecting room temperature information), direct digital general-purpose controllers, and application-specific or unitary controllers. BACnet has been endorsed by various standards organizations, including the American National Standards Institute and the International Organization for Standardization. In 2003, conformance tests for BACnet equipment were established; now different vendors' devices can operate from the same baseline.
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