Building Automation

Building automation involves installing automated systems for controlling, regulating, monitoring and optimizing conditions and facilities. A key component of facility management, its goals are to save costs for energy and operation, automatically control functions according to predefined parameters while also making it simpler to operate and monitor of all of these functions. All of a building’s sensors, actuators, controls and other technical systems and units are networked with one another. Processes can be grouped in scenarios to enable intelligent, optimized interplay of the various components involved.

Not only the seasons of the year, but also the number of persons present, how a given building is used, and many other factors can make it necessary to constantly make a vast number of adjustments. All this would exceed human capabilities. But luckily it’s a simple matter for automated systems. Scenarios are defined to intelligently automate any or all of the following for an entire building and/or in even greater detail for each individual room:

• Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), air quality
• Lighting
• Sun blinds
• Occupancy sensing
• Equipment for controlling electric power and other systems
• Capture of consumption data (heat, natural gas, electric power, water)
• Automatic control of multimedia systems and equipment
• Integration of safety and security systems: access control, fire protection, video monitoring, robbery detection, doors and windows
• Remote monitoring and control

All commercial and public buildings can benefit from the advantages of a building automation solution. Many of them are today hardly imaginable without automation as the technological heart of the building. Office and administrative buildings, shopping centers, event venues or sports arenas, airports, hospitals and clinics, schools and universities, industrial and commercial premises - whenever efficiency, security and comfort need to be increased, a building automation system helps. Today, new buildings are planned right away with intelligent automation solutions, but it is also possible to convert previously "dumb" existing buildings into intelligent smart buildings.

In a nutshell, all of a building’s technical systems and components are tightly controlled. They are integrated in a single, unified system with the processes that are desired or needed at any given time being bundled in scenarios.

Building automation systems comprise four levels.

The field level is the foundation of every such system. Its sensors capture data from all components and subsystems that need to be regulated and controlled.

The captured information is appropriately converted and then sent via a bus network or conventional cables to controllers in the automation level. This level controls, regulates and monitors the building’s systems and equipment based on parameters prescribed by the management level. Here software has the job of implementing higher-level control and optimization algorithms, in addition to running, visualizing and monitoring processes. Going further, as networking of multiple buildings becomes more common, the role of the cloud is increasing in importance.