Smart buildings

Domotics, smart buildings and smart cities.

Domotics (from the latin word "domus", house), it's the encounter of information technology, electrotechnics and electronics that makes a home become "smart”

            This nascent concept arises from the idea of have a more comfortable life and to take care of the environment but also approach relevant topics as security, monitoring and controlling of energy, accessibility and communications.

            This idea has been growing really quickly, first evolve to smart building, where the companies which want to have a better control of their cost-energy, smart security and also contribute to take care of the environment. Then the idea evolves to smart cities where the concept was developed as the integration of the two mentioned ideas but adding smart infrastructure of the cities and a bigger contribution of the care of the environment.

            The environment is a real important part as you can see, but how all these ideas can help with the environment? To answer that we need to know how they work.

            A smart house is a house that has a brain and can take decisions and follow orders, its brain is a microcontroller where all the information arrives and its processed and sometime stored, all the information is recollected by sensors then send it to the MC and then to and actuator, lets see an example, in order to save energy we can use the sun light in the day and then turn on the lights in the night but this process can be made automatically to do this we need to install a sensor that knows when its day and when its night, so it can send a signal to the MC and the MC can send another signal to an actuator in this case a relay to turn on the lights, so every time that the sensor detects that it is dark the light will turn on. In this example we can see how the automatization of the lights can contribute to save electrical energy taking advantage of the sun light this is not just good for the environment but also allow us comfortability because we don’t have to worry about forget turn off the lights anymore the house will do it for us.

            Also, the security is important, every owner wants to be safe or protect its things, more than only cameras there are sensors of movement that can detect the presence of intruders closing the access to the house or even systems that simulate the presence of someone inside the house. There can be incidences like fires, floods and gas leaks for that the system can take action, for example a shortcut on the kitchen that can make fire, the sensor will detect the smoke and turn off the electricity of the kitchen and if the fire is still there it can throw water.

This provide us a lot of ways to make the daily things more comfortable and efficient not just in a house also in a building or in a city

Another example of this is a thermostat that we used to use to control the temperature, but now there are many ideas about of the development of these. For example, in a near future they will being using a GPS to know where we are for the device can turn on or turn off the air conditioner to save energy and when we arrive the house is at a comfortable temperature.

Another kind of improvement is a smart-lock that could allow us who can enter or not to our house through Bluetooth connection with our smartphone and with this, we could see who is at the door of our house.

The implementation of technology in buildings appeared before the concept of smart buildings as in the 50’s with the implementation of fire alarms, 60’s with save time systems, 70’s with energy conservation and crime systems this going on until the automated and intelligent systems, the difference of both is that in automation systems the devices are programmed to make the same functions repeatedly and intelligent systems through algorithms can predict what the user need with his habits and the information that is generated.

This technology of smart buildings can grow to smart cities where all the buildings can be easy communicated solving many problems, also the technology that is used can be cheaper overtime, but first it has to start with shorter buildings, so it needs more time to be applied in big scale, 

Nowadays the problems that cause the buildings are increasing, in Europe only, the industrial facilities produce a lot of pollution damage costs like the large power plants (estimated at 66 – 112 billion €), refineries, manufacturing combustion (8–21 billion €) and industrial processes (23–28 billion €), waste and certain agricultural activities. In the US, according to the Department of Energy, buildings consume approximately 37% of the energy and 68% of the electricity produced annually, so the smart buildings can be a good option for energy conservation and pollution.

Conclusion

            The smart building implementations are growing over time, this technology can be cheaper in the future, so it could be a good option to solve environment problems, also the benefits that provides to the users are a good inversion, but it needs more time to be implemented in more countries and cities.

Arturo Espinosa

Maximiliano Eb