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IoT for Smart Buildings - Long Awaited Revolution or Lean Evolution

Conference Paper · August 2018

DOI: 10.1109/FiCloud.2018.00029

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IoT for smart buildings - long awaited revolution or
lean evolution
Marcin Bajer
ABB Corporate Research Center
Starowiślna 13a
31-038 Kraków, Poland
Email: marcin.bajer@pl.abb.com

a) Traditional building b) Intelligent building c) IoT based building

Abstract—It is expected that popularization of smart building
technology will redefine the way we work and live in the future. Lights Garden Lights Garden Lights Garden

Energy used in buildings represents significant part of global HVAC Multimedia HVAC Multimedia HVAC Multimedia
energy consumption and humans spend most of the time indoors. Visualization
Air quality Roller blinds Air quality Roller blinds Predicitve maitenance
Air quality
Even now, using proven and commercially available technology, Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence Storage
Roller blinds

Energy Surveillance Energy

it is possible to achieve significant reduction in building mainte- management management
Surveillance Energy
management
Big Data Analytics
Surveillance

nance costs and energy consumption providing more comfortable Renovables Internet Renovables Internet Renovables Internet

living environment at the same time. Nevertheless, the promise Security Fire alarm Security Fire alarm Security Fire alarm

of intelligent buildings extends far beyond energy efficiency or

housing comfort. Together with concept of Internet of Things it
may change the world more than the Internet did. Will it be so?
How this process will look like? What are potential threats? This
paper will briefly cover current trends in building automation
systems and try to answer all those questions. It will focus both
on currently implemented solutions, mainly from ABB portfolio,
as well as on potential disruptive technologies that will shape the
future of intelligent buildings.∗
I. I NTRODUCTION
Currently, over half of the world’s population lives in urban
areas, it is expected by 2050, this coefficient will grown to 66
per cent [1]. The coming decades will bring changes in the way
space and buildings are developed and used. Land shortage
leads to a tendency to construct taller buildings and dig for
space underground. Such buildings exploit the land, but have
the negative effects in the environment and create new prob-
lems including increasing population congestion, pollution,
reduce citizen access to fresh air and sunligh [2]. Those factors
will be important drivers for the evolution of smart buildings.
Urbanization and shortage of natural resources requires build-
ing owners and the government to take responsibility not only
for building maintenance and operations, but also to care for
such things as sustainability, energy management, pollution
or livability. To address new challenges construction industry
must apply latest advances in technology (new materials, IT
solutions) as well as improvements for health and well-being
of people.
II. S MART BUILDING DEFINITION
Unfortunately, there is no common definition of smart
building. Existing definitions focus on three major features
of smart buildings:
∗ Publication is based on keynote speech lead by Marcin Bajer on 23rd
International Workshop of the European Group for Intelligent Computing in
Engineering June 29th – July 1st, 2016, Kraków, Poland
Management consoles for
individual subsystems
Multifunction management
consoles
Multifunction management
consoles
Fig. 1. Regular vs. Intelligent building (base on [4])
• Reduction of building operation and maintenance costs,
• Improvement of health, satisfaction and well-being of
building users,
• Minimization of building environmental impact (not only
by the reduction of energy/water consumption or waste
production, but also by sustainable architecture),
Of course, there are many different types of buildings,
each type has its own specific characteristics, but to some
extend, most of the considerations discussed in this text can be
applied to all of them. The core part of each smart building is
Building Automation System (also known as Building Manage-
ment System). It controls controls and monitors the building’s
mechanical and electrical equipment such as ventilation, light-
ing, power systems, fire systems, and security systems [3]. In
traditional building, those subsystems operates separately and
communication between them is limited (Figure 1a). If data
remains solely contained within the boundary of the original
subsystem it can not be fully utilized. Those so called informa-
tion silos are typically operated by a unique, vendor specific
software system which additionally makes them difficult to
manage and maintain. Moreover, it is common that, due to
the lack of integration, various subsystems duplicates the same
sensors.
Smart buildings use information technology to connect
variety of subsystems in the way those subsystems can share
the information to optimize total building performance. The
communication between particular subsystems is more often
standardized. Data integration in smart buildings goes beyond
the equipment installed within building four walls. Smart
buildings interact with IT systems of utilities providers or
 KNX BACnet IoT

Application KNX Application Interface IoT Application | Device management

Layer
... Binary JSON
Presentation
Recycle Fire brigade BACnet Application Layer REST
KNX Application Layer
Session HTTP/HTTPS AMQP/MQTT CoAP

Transport KNX Transport Layer TCP UDP

Computer
Network KNX Network Layer BACnet Network Layer 6LoWPAN | IPv6 | IPv4 | RPL++
Aided ERP
Facility Datalink KNX Datalink Layer ISO 8802-2 MS/TP PPT
Management Ambulance
Electricity
KNX ISO EIA- EIA- LonTalk 802.15.4 WiFi Ethernet Fiber Cellular …
Physical TP1 PL110 RF ARCNET
IP 8802-3 485 232

Building Tenant
… Automation Management
Systems Software
Gas Police
Fig. 3. Building automation protocols

Computer
Aided Geographic
Information
Design System
Water Software
Security
Fig. 2. Smart building data integration layers
emergency services as well as with dedicated software which
supports facility management (Figure 2).
There is a common misconception that smart buildings
are only limited to the Building Automation System (BAS)
part. In fact, smart buildings are much more than just set
of automation systems. In the literature one may find also
term intelligent building which is older and initially had more
limited scope - to some extend similar to modern Building
Automation Systems. Currently, term intelligent building is
being used interchangeably with smart building [5], but author
of this publication would like to distinguish those two terms.
Smart buildings seems to be new, enhanced version of intelli-
gent buildings, which provide wider integration with utilities
and city infrastructure (i.e. to realize smart grid/smart city
idea) and may use sophisticated algorithms such as machine
learning or AI for advanced control and diagnostics. Smart
buildings utilize also the Internet of Things (IoT) concept and
involves wider range of equipment including household goods
or multimedia and mobile devices.
III. C OMMUNICATION IN SMART BUILDINGS - CURRENT
STATUS
Like in Tower of Babel there are many different com-
munication protocols in field of smart buildings (Figure 3).
Over the years, proprietary solutions has been replaced closed
standards, nowadays we can observe trend toward open pro-
tocols. Unfortunately, there is no one major standard. Due to
broad range of applications, it is difficult to establish common
communication standard for low level communication. Smart
building equipment need to deal with various constraints such
as energy usage, high level of security, limited computation
power and many others. In addition, devices installed in a
building often comes from different industries each promoting
own standard (lighting - DALI, metering - mBus, HVAC
- Opentherm/BACnet, industrial equipment - Modbus/OPC).
Separate category are the wireless protocols - again, there is
no dominant standard in this field, but to indicate a few major,
one can mention ZigBee, Bluetooth LE, Z-Wave or EnOcean
which is dedicated for batteryless solutions. A lack of collabo-
ration between the subsectors of the building industry prolongs
new technology adoption and may foreclose achieving, by the
new buildings, targets in energy, economic and environmental
performance [6]. It is much easier to find common solutions on
higher layers of communication. The are two protocols usually
used for backbone of smart buildings - KNX and BACnet,
each of them provides a set of different gateways to allow
interoperability and integrate other communication protocols.
IV. I MPACT OF I OT ON SMART BUILDINGS
The IoT uses one common Internet Protocol (IP) to connect
devices, every single device can communicate directly with
each other and/or with the cloud. To cover all specific topics
related to implementation of this concept for buildings special
term - Building Internet of Things (BIoT) was established.
BIoT can be defined as, the overlaying of an IP network,
connecting all the building services monitoring, analyzing
and controlling without the intervention of humans [7]. The
potential high-level benefits deriving from the implementation
of IoT for buildings seems to be demonstrable. BIoT is
seen as an important tool that will ultimately improve the
efficiency of building automation systems and may solve one
of the major problem of intelligent buildings implementation
- interoperability.
Currently, everybody recognize the potential of IoT. Signifi-
cant funding is spend on IoT related R&D activities involving
new players (i.e. IoT startups), but the manufacturers are very
often struggling to make a concrete business cases for im-
plementation. Deep understanding of user’s needs is required
to succeed. In addition, problems of interoperability, privacy
and security seems to be not fully solved. Almost half of
the future consumers have concerns about the use of smart
technologies, because of inadequate data protection and cyber
intrusion [8]. Consequently, the focus of the industry has been
on manufacturing and producing the right types of hardware
to enable those solutions in the future. More and more devices
installed in the building has capabilities to become edge
devices for connection to the cloud. At the moment, those
devices are used to collect data locally and provide access to
aggregated data. Very often this data is not only accessible for
BMS via standardized protocols (BACnet, Modbus, OPC), but
also directly for the user via embedded web page. Due to the
emerge of on client-side web site rendering techniques such
as AngularJS or React, it is possible to provide sophisticated
data visualization with relatively not powerful server device.
Such pre-cloud solution to some extend is covered by the term
 CLOUD
ABB Ability
EDGE EDGE
IBM Amazon
Watson
Azure Predix
a) FOG b) CLOUD c) INTERCLOUD
Fig. 4. IoT for smart buildings development stages
"fog computing" (Figure 4a). Data is stored and analysed at
the edge of the network. This reduces problem of the privacy
and security. At the same time, it allows in the future to fast
implement communication to the cloud and offer new cloud
based services to the user (Figure 4b).
Current approach, in many cases, is to use the cloud mainly
for advanced control and diagnostics (Figure 5). As it was
in the traditional building automation system, the core logic
is distributed locally. Building data is fed back to influence
actions within minimal latency. Sensors, controllers and ac-
tuators are in close proximity, so that any adverse shift in
output parameters can be immediately be mitigated. Building
users/operators, base on operational data, control system’s set-
points to achieve the best comfort and overall efficiency. The
cloud, is additional level of control loop, which looks at higher
level patterns and correlations [9]. The output can be used by
building managers to make over-arching decisions relating to
operations and maintenance or, providing that latency require-
ments allows that, for automatic control purpose.
The age of propritery solutions on a system level is largely
history. But what about the cloud level? Unfortunately, current
approach of most IoT manufacturers is to build whole solution,
including their own cloud, from the scratch. As a result, there
is a lack of consistency and standards across the cloud services
used by the different IoT solutions [10]. While it is easy to
integrate the data within the scope of ecosystem provided by
the same vendor, it might be difficult to share data between
clouds or collect data from multi-vendor devices and systems
into one cloud. If standardization will not proceed, the problem
will only increase as we move toward greater IoT adoption.
In the end, we may end-up with the same problem of data
silos which plagued in-house network, but this time at the
cloud level. While, the multi-cloud environment seems to be
inevitable, it is necessary to develop standards to allow the
inter-cloud communication (Figure 4c).
V. I OT CLOUD SOLUTIONS
The IoT revolution, which we can already observe, changes
the structure of the smart building market. New players such
as Google, Amazon, Cisco, Apple or Microsoft try to impose
their solutions. It is expected, that we will observe shift
away from selling equipment towards selling services. On one
hand, major players are involved in standardization, supporting
multiple open standardization bodies, but on the other hand,
they are interested in securing their market share. For that
Long term maintenance
System operation
Automatic control
Operational
System data data Measurements Sensors
Advanced analytics
User/Operator Control logic System
and control
High level control
Set points Control signals Actuators
and diagnostics
Fig. 5. Control, Operation and maintenance loops
reason, it is not sure that fully open standards will become a
norm in IoT. In case of smart phone revolution, the market
of OS for mobile phones has been dominated by Android
and iOS. Although, Android is currently an open standard,
middleware and application layers (i.e. Google applications)
use proprietary specifications - similar situation can occur in
IoT [11].
One of key success factors which decided about global
acceptance of iOS and Android was allowing users to de-
velop competing software and monetize their ideas. Similarly,
Microsoft with its Azure cloud platform provides vast set of
tools enabling enterprises to build sophisticated IoT solutions
quickly and efficiently. The price one have to pay for this is
dependency on Microsoft API, limited customization options
and cloud service costs.
Many traditional automation manufacturers, to some extend,
use a cloud-based platform compatible with/on top of Mi-
crosoft Azure (ABB - Ability, Siemens - MindSphare, GE
- Predix). Those clouds offer a broad range of analytics and
services. While Azure market share is growing, it is not the
only this type platform on the market - Google (Google Cloud
IoT) and Amazon (AWS IoT), IBM (Watson IoT) provides
similar solutions. In general, services such as machine learn-
ing, cloud storage, voice recognition delivered by Microsoft,
Google, Amazon or Intel are used as a new set of tools which
were not available before. The competitive edge lies in how
those tools are used [12]. It is important to indicate that all
the major cloud platforms, to some extend, support MQTT
as the communication protocol. For this reason, if one would
like to find common standard for IoT to cloud communication,
MQTT would be the first answer.
VI. S TATE OF THE A RT
While IT companies step in to the smart building market, the
traditional building automation manufacturers such as ABB,
Siemens, Honeywell or Schneider also trying to extend their
portfolio. Using their unique competences and market position
they can gain competitive advantage over the others. For
example, ABB is not only a leading company in the area of
KNX based building automation systems, but also one of the
largest providers of electricity grid equipment, key player in
providing industrial automation and power conversion systems
 Set-top boxes 1.16%
0.92% Imaging equipments
via standard protocols - Modbus RTU/TCP and SNMP or in
External power supplies 1.94%
Air-conditioning 2.12% 1.24% Office appliances stand-by aggregated, visual form, through the built-in web page. What is
Dishwashers 2.69% 2.84% Air-conditioning more, it is possible to integrate the system with ABB AbilityTM
Computers 2.75% 3.42% Computers
4.73% Street lighting
cloud to store information and drive efficiency for the long
Ventilation 2.75%
Home appliances stand-by 5.37% 5.26% Cooking appliances term with advanced analytics.
Washing machines 6.37% 5.92% Pumps
Television 6.74% 6.26% Miscellaneous
6.84% Circulators (and other
Electricity is the largest utility expense for most of the
Electric ovens & hobs 7.49%
Others 7.57%
similar) buildings, but of course not the only one. To comprehensively
8.66% Commercial refrigeration
Water heaters 8.59% solve the problem of realtime utility usage monitoring ABB
12.62% Ventilation
Lighting 10.49% has developed EQmatic system [18]. This integrated solution
19.73% Space and water heating
Cold appliances (refrigerators &
freezers) 15.24% 21.57% Office lighting is capable of collecting data from all utility meters installed in
Heating/electric boilers 18.73% the building. For collecting the data from the metering devices
Residential - 800,72 TWh Tertiary sector - 760,43 TWh M-Bus protocol is used. M-Bus is a European standard and
widely accepted solution for Automatic Meter Reading (AMR)
Fig. 6. Breakdown of residential and tertiary sector‡ electricity consumption therefore EQmatic allows to integrate multi-vendor devices.
in EU-27 in 2007 [16]
In case the particular meter does not support M-Bus, it is
possible to use Modbus instead or install additional M-Bus
(EV chargers, PV inverters). Integration of devices installed impulse adapter. The entire user interface is fully web based
both inside the building and the external one (i.e. electrical and accessible through the browser. Each of registered users
grid) requires cooperation of all stockholders, but it seems to can create own configurable dashboards to quickly access the
be essential to fully unlock potential of smart buildings - both required data. Besides the instantaneous values, the device
in terms of cost savings and reducing building environmental provides several analysis functions such as historical data
impact. With a broad portfolio, it is easier to provide compre- analysis, cost analysis or benchmark functions. All those
hensive solutions, which later very often determine standards features make building energy flows and cost transparent.
in the field. They also can help building owners to implement energy
management systems and put in place standards such as ISO
VII. E NERGY & COST EFFICIENCY 50001 or ISO 14001. In addition, the device provides various
Increasing price of oil, gas and electicy are the main driver export functions for further processing of the data.
conducive to reduce energy usage, but energy efficiency is not
only about cost cutting. Buildings are responsible for one third Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) is re-
of total global energy consumption and an equally important sponsible for a significant proportion of total building energy
share of CO2 [13]. Global climate change is forcing us to consumption (see Figure 6) therefore running it properly and
reduce energy consumption to save the planet. at peak efficiency is the first step towards reduction of overall
building energy usage. Implementation of efficient HVAC
Key to energy savings is energy consumption awareness.
system requires few components: hardware which allows fine-
Householders can find it difficult to reduce their domestic
grained control over the HVAC system, sensors for mon-
electricity consumption because the energy cost is billed in
itoring various physical attributes (occupancy/door&window
aggregate, at long intervals and retrospectively [14]. Moreover,
contacts/environmental conditions/energy usage) and logic to
energy meters are installed at high level of the circuit, for that
maintain optimal thermal comfort and indoor air quality using
reason it is not possible to verify electricity consumption of
minimal energy. In intelligent buildings HVAC installation is
particular electric appliances. Providing feedback of usage that
tightly coupled with the rest of the system. The integration
disaggregated by sub-appliances lead to more efficient energy
can be done both on low level incorporating individual HVAC
usage and overall reduction in consumption [15]. Of course, it
actuators to smart building backbone such as KNX and/or on
is easy to find the general statistics such as Figure 6, but the
higher level - bridging the subsystems.
ability to see in-house consumption has a much greater impact
on one’s behaviour. In order to address this requirement,
The IoT revolution is also influencing HVAC systems. IoT
ABB provides Circuit Monitoring Systems (CMS). The system
smart thermostats and environmental sensors can be easier
consists of control unit and sensors (Figure 7). The control unit
deployed and integrated into system. This makes system more
CMS-700 allows to measure the currents, voltages and power
flexible and allows to better adjusts space conditions based
at the connection to the grid [17]. In addition, each circuit
on occupant feedback. In addition, new sensing capabilities
breaker can be equipped with current sensor which measure
triggers the implementation of more complex control logic and
the current TRMS at the branch. With this information, system
allows holistic system approach that accounts interaction of all
can calculate power for each branch and early detect any
subsystems in the building - i.e. with dynamic precooling or
deviation in power consumption. The data can be accessed
preaheating system can reduce energy usage during consump-
‡ Tertiary sector refers to the public sector, education, healthcare, services tion peaks, adopt to occupants daily habits and optimize usage
and commerce. of renewable energy.

Fig. 7. ABB Circuit Monitor System
VIII. C OMFORT
Smart building implementation is not only about cost saving
and environmental impact. It also involves using all the build-
ing automation to improve the overall user experience. The
system sense the internal and external conditions and responds
in the way users could feel safe and comfortable. The comfort
metrics can be characterised in 3 main metrics [19]:
Thermal comfort There are several factors which impact
overall thermal well-being. Air temperature and velocity, hu-
midity, mean radiating temperature effect in complicated way
how we perceive temperature. Having in mind that the system
has inertia and each user has its own preferences it is not easy
to determine the algorithm for automatic control.
The Nest Learning Thermostat is innovative, IoT solution,
for this problem. The control is based on user’s feedback.
Temperature can be set manually via local HMI or through a
mobile device and the cloud. The device learns the occupant’s
habits and adjust the control accordingly. After a bit of time, it
knows when to turn on heating and cooling or when nobody
is at home and system can be put to energy saving mode.
Further more, the system can be integrated with the local
energy provider in the way, local utility company can reduce
the load during consumption peak, offering discounts on the
bill in return [20]. In addition, Nest provides comprehensive
API for further integration with other systems.
Visual comfort Providing visual comfort is also a complex
issue with a lot of influencing factors. In general, it depends
on having appropriate amount of light for the performed task.
Good visual comfort depends also on light source and light
distribution. Direct lighting tends to create more shadows and
contrast and is more harsh than indirect lighting, therfore light
colored walls and cailings and indirect light may improve
visual comfort [21]. Also the light color spectrum influences
our perception of the environment. In general, artificial light
spectrum should be as close as possible to that of sunlight,
which varies on time of the day and year and influences human
circadian system. All those factors are challenging not only for
interior designer, but also for smart building lighting system.
First of all, it should give the users ultimate control over
their own visual needs by providing the required light sources,
second it should be equipped with required sensors and logic
to customize the internal lighting to the user’s needs. Current
solutions concentrate mainly on providing individual light
switch and dim as well as on calling up predefined dimming
values and light scenes both via local HMI and automatically
- base on movement detection. The key aspect in this area
is integration of light systems such as DALI, Philips Hue or
Osram Lightify with building automation system [22] [23] and
further on with the cloud.
Noise level Although the acoustical environment in the build-
ing is mainly result of design, smart buildings control systems,
can play some role in the providing acoustic comfort in
the building. The source of the noise in the building can
be internal or external. In case of internal one, intelligent
control of HVAC, central vacuum, shatters or other noisy
building equipment can reduce noise nuisance. As for the
external sounds, windows and glazing, normally used to allow
daylight to enter the space and reject heat, can be also used to
protect from external noise. Another option to address acoustic
issues is to use sound masking systems. Sound masking using
engineered background sounds distributed via loudspeakers in
the ceiling to reduce impact of distracting sounds [24].
Indoor air quality Indoor air quality management is rela-
tively new topic. Studies shown that indoor air pollution levels
are often many times higher than outdoor [25]. Many of the
indoor pollutants came from the structure of the building itself
(asbestos, radon, formaldehyde) so they can not be eliminated
by the building control system, therefore building construction
or retrofit phases are crucial to ensure safety of the occupants
in the future. The most important task of building automation
is to ensure that the air is circulated effectively in all parts
of the building. Inadequate ventilation of a building impairs
the quality of the room air. Important factor which influence
perception of indoor air quality is CO2 concentration. A
high CO2 level in the air influences badly the well-being
of occupants, therefore more and more building automation
systems integrates CO2 sensors [26] to include it into HVAC
control loop. To reduce energy consumption while maintain-
ing adequate air quality, demand controlled ventilation can
be implemented. Instead of fixed air replacement rate, CO2
sensors can be used to adjust ventilation throughput to actual
emissions of building occupants.
While discussing comfort in smart buildings, it is important to
include safety and security. Traditionally, methods of linking
security systems with smart home installation were limited.
Security installation was isolated from the other systems to
meet tough reliability and security requirements. Despite the
difficulties, the integration of data from security system into
smart building seems to be required. Sensors in the security
system offer entirely new possibilities for data collection.
Not only does this increase the capabilities of the smart
building logic, but also allows savings related to installation
cost (less wiring, no sensors duplication). Typically, such an
integrated safety systems are working in 2 modes. During
normal security systems support the logic of the intelligent
building. For example, door and window sensors, together
with the motion sensors integrated into security system can
help in effective control of light or heating. In second mode,
in case of emergency situation, safety system can use all the
devices installed in the intelligent building to react properly
to the threat. For example, alarm of gas detector can result
 Magnet
read Glass-break Gas
contact
Smoke Water Motion
sensor detector detector detector detector
Although, the idea IoT for smart buildings seems to be
Motion
detector for Setting
promising, we are just on the beginning of the road towards
security bus
Zone
device
its broad implementation. The technology is already available,
bus
Signalling module but security and privacy issues, which were neglected in this
device

Security bus
paper, need to be solved first. Also IoT manufacturers need to
KNX bus
get more customer acceptance for new solutions.
KNX Security panel
Call-in
Bus for
MyBuildings
keypads
Portal
Router
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Email
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Fig. 8. ABB safe&smart system
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[20] Nest Fact Sheet, Rush Hour Rewards, http://vaeec.org/wp-
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cost-effective and easier to deploy. Although, they will not Accessed 2018.04.02
substitute full BMS, they can add more logic to the building. [21] McLennan, J.F., The Philosophy of Sustainable Design: The Future of
Architecture, Ecotone, 2004
Also in case of buildings which already have BMS in place, [22] ABB i-bus R
KNX Application Manual Lighting, 2CDC500051M0203
IoT devices can be natural extension of such systems. [23] ABB-free@home R
System Manual, 1473-1-8580, 05.03.2015
Another important distinguishing feature of IoT is integra- [24] Sinopoli, J., Advanced Technology for Smart Buildings, Artech House
Publishers, 2016, p. 14
tion with the cloud. This, potentially, allows to add more [25] Chiras, D.D., Environmental Science, Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC,
complex logic to the system, perform predictive maintenance 2004, p. 472
or remote access. The cloud integration is also opening new [26] ABB i-bus R
KNX LGS/A 1.1 Product Manual, 2CDC508087D0202
[27] ABB safe&smart KNX Security Panel GM/A 8.1 Brochure,
market related to IoT data analytics. To some extend IoT is 2CDC513058B0201
also democratizing the smart building market. Using platforms
such as Azure, it is easier to develop new product without Figures 1, 2, 4, 5, 8 include Font Awsome free icons
significant infrastructure costs. (https://fontawesome.com). Figure 6 is generated with AmCharts library.

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