Smart buildings make sustainability reports easier to prepare.
By imposing reporting obligations under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the EU has introduced mandatory requirements for reporting environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) information – a tedious and laborious process at best when the data is logged manually. The better way involves sensors, which smart buildings contain in great numbers. These sensors capture relevant data on energy and water consumption, the use of space and other things and thus help simplify the monitoring process. The data can also be harnessed to optimise a building’s features and its consumption of resources.
Simplified building management
predictive maintenance and precise analyses
Lower resource consumption
and compliance with sustainability targets
Easier preparation of sustainability reports
such as CSRD disclosures
Improved working conditions
thanks to higher comfort levels, e.g. in terms of the indoor climate
Smart metering involves intelligent, interconnected meters measuring the consumption of resources such as electricity, water, heating oil and gas. This ensures a high degree of transparency for energy flows, allowing them to be analysed and fine-tuned precisely. Most smart meters use LoRaWAN sensors, which are easy to retrofit, run on batteries (which need changing every 10 years or so) and can transmit data over distances of up to 15 kilometres
Nowadays, many workers split their time between the office and their home. Occupancy sensors allow the capacity utilisation of workstations in buildings to be measured and analysed, furnishing important information for converting individual workstations to a hot-desking arrangement. The sensors also facilitate smart cleaning, where cleaners use an app to see which parts of the building have been used and which have not, enabling them to adjust their cleaning schedules. This saves time, money, water, energy and cleaning products.
Physical keys have a few downsides: they take effort to manage, they can fall into the wrong hands, there is no way of restricting when they can be used, and losing them is extremely irritating. Digital keys, by contrast, which can be issued as transponders or in a smartphone app, are much more convenient. Scanners communicate with the key devices via Bluetooth, NFC or RFID and grant authorised users access to parts of a building, lifts, garages and many other places.
Indoor navigation is all about enabling employees, visitors, maintenance staff or suppliers to find their way around buildings faster, saving them time and thus making them happier. Bluetooth Beacons spread around the building detect people’s positions and communicate with an app on the user’s smartphone. This lets them navigate accurately through office blocks, trade fair halls, shopping centres, airports, hospitals and more.
As well as being important for individual well-being, ensuring a good level of air quality inside a building also plays a key role in curbing the spread of disease. Air quality sensors measure various parameters such as CO2, particulates, temperature and humidity inside individual rooms. If they detect that certain thresholds have been reached there, they send a wireless signal to the building systems. These then make the necessary adjustments to allow fresh air to flow into the room, thus ensuring a consistently high level of air quality inside the building.