Real estate contributes as much as 40% of global carbon emissions. Reducing this contribution requires evidence-based decisions for which high-quality data is critical.
Techniques for gaining access to data from buildings have come a long way over the last 15 years. Previously just the purview of premium new buildings, existing buildings can now benefit from the latest integrated systems platform (ISP) technologies and the new environmental algorithms that are designed to decarbonise buildings.
How ISPs capture higher quality data than alternatives
Collecting high quality and timely data is a core function of an ISP, and they come complete with data integrity layers designed to protect the quality of data. The integrity checks are based on the context of each point and their historical data patterns.
Identification of data anomalies and data gaps will activate automated quarantining or correcting actions to ensure the data is of the highest quality when it comes to converting this data into reliable, trusted information. This is a core feature of an ISP. Combining context and data patterns to each type of data ensures a solid defence to protect the quality of data.
Why building investors, landlords and occupiers need the quality of data only ISPs can provide
The chart below shows energy use from the lighting systems of a sample of 10 sites within one of Avani’s client portfolios. The spikes demonstrate that there are two stores where the lights are using energy throughout the night, despite the building management system (BMS) indicating that the lights were turned off. This detection by the ISP was automated and was based around the context of the data and the relationships between them.
The purpose of the BMS is to monitor and control the comfort levels of a building. It is not common for BMS specification to have the granular level of data management to identify such anomalies between different data sources. This is for good reason, as the BMS is designed to track a finite number of data points from a finite number of systems for a specific purpose. However, an ISP has no limits to the number of building systems they can connect to, the number of points they manage, nor the number of applications that need to access this data. In this example, the client electing to put an ISP across its portfolio unlocks the insights from the algorithms to detect and communicate the potential savings opportunity of over $1M p.a. across their portfolio.
How ISPs work with the BMS and other building systems and applications
ISPs are designed to protect the slower, more volatile building systems unable to handle the volumes of data requests from multiple applications. This includes the BMS and their sub-LAN devices. Protection is achieved by balancing data acquisitions and building dynamic caching layers to cater for the ever-increasing demand from multiple applications needing secure access to any data required, at any frequency.
Some investors, landlords and tenants allow multiple vendors to deploy their own data acquisition devices. However, if there are multiple systems independently accessing the same data from the same building systems, it will degrade their performance and, in some cases, cause the building systems to fail.
ISPs standardise every asset and their points, including the naming, tagging, attributes, and relationships. While Avani’s data platforms are aimed at helping organisations improve and report on their environmental (and soon social and governance) performance, open data platforms such as Avani’s allow a vast array of applications to use these data and associated models to help search, configure, diagnose, and automate their requirements. Ultimately, this reduces the load on the BMS and protects other critical building systems.
Contact Avani today to discuss how we can make sure you’re getting the quality of data you need to deliver a strong ROI for your environmental improvement project.