Cities: liven up your real estate

Geological era extending from – 66 Ma to – 2.58 Ma, the Tertiary corresponds to the great replacement of dinosaurs by mammals, which suits us well. Although few tertiary buildings date from this period, it is a fact that not all are at the same technological level. Rightly so, their function does not necessarily require significant modernization expenses.

Under the pressure of the necessary reduction of environmental impacts, as well as recent regulations (e.g. tertiary decree and BACS decree for France), we must  now be concerned with their energy management – and more generally with the technical management of their various elements. To reduce impacts, improve user comfort, reduce expenses and optimize the use of these premises.

Tertiary animals: Paraceratherium looking for food, by Elizabeth Rungius Fulda, 1923

Some animation themes

It is possible to evoke many subjects around which communities can animate their buildings – and especially not to hesitate to combine them for maximum efficiency:

• Coupling with schedules of use of the premises, according to their destination (school, media library, sports equipment, offices, technical room, etc.): each has its own schedule that it is possible to take into account to refine the management of its equipment;
• Heating / ventilation / air conditioning: who has not been too cold in summer, too hot in winter, because of rigid thermal regulation, therefore unsuitable?
• Taking into account current and future external conditions (weather forecasts) for optimized instructions;
• Control and regulation of air quality (CO2, VOC), humidity, etc.
• Coupling and selective dissemination of alerts and alarms according to their nature and criticality (warnings, technical failures, intrusion, smoke / fire, etc.)
• Lighting control (sports equipment, parks and gardens, car parks, etc.)
• Level of site attendance (agents, service providers, public, etc.)

In practice, there are three families of buildings: connected, weakly connected and not connected. It is possible to act on each , in a pragmatic way, without modifying them.

Connected buildings: enriching and complementing the existing BMS

Modern or renovated premises are often equipped with a technical building management system (BMS) that supervises and controls the various services such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning. In this case, it is possible to connect to the BMS interface either to provide it with additional information (calendar, weather forecast, attendance, etc.), or, even better, to provide it with dynamic instructions based on this information.

Weakly connected buildings: SMS and light IoT

Many buildings are equipped with older generation systems, making it possible to perform local functions (turn on the heating) and sometimes to notify some changes of state (thresholds, alarms, etc.) often by means of SMS. In this case, we can simply use the SMS as a natural language API, and possibly complete the installation with a few inexpensive connected sensors that are easy to install: environmental data sensor (CO2, VOC, temperature, humidity…), dry relay allowing remote start / stop, local metering, from which many automatic, simple, efficient and common sense processes can be carried out.

Buildings not at all connected: teams assitance

Since unconnected buildings are the most common, it must be taken into account all the more seriously. Good news: if it is not possible or too expensive to connect it weakly, all is not lost! It is possible to use a well-used tool: the intelligence of the teams in charge of equipment maintenance. Problem: humans speak neither REST API, nor HTML, nor JavaScript… Their API: natural language, everyday language, in their mother tongue. It is therefore necessary to be able to address them in a simple way, with very precise contextual automatic notifications (“Tomorrow the gymnasium will be used from 8:00 am, and the night is announced cold. Do not forget to position the heating in position economy 2 before leaving tonight. Thank you.”) and give them the possibility to go and find information on their own when they need it: “what is the current temperature in the gymnasium?”.

At the service of the teams

With in-depth knowledge of their environment, the teams in charge of the building already have the know-how to keep their premises in good working order. To enable them to go even further, it is essential to offer solutions that are extremely easy to use, through which they can themselves define the right mix between automated control and manual control, and above all with which communication (notifications, queries) is done in a perfectly natural way.

Here is a short video showing how to optimize the heating of a sports room according to its schedule of use and the weather forecast:

For a transversal approach to projects and an alliance between technology and civil servant

A city has an extensive building, of several tens or even hundreds of premises whose uses and technical conditions are very variable: schools, sports and associative premises, administration, parks and gardens, etc. A sincere and effective consideration of environmental impact reduction, accompanied by a significant decrease in expenditure requires a comprehensive approach, taking into account the entire building, whatever its technical level. In compliance with strong budgetary constraints and the organizations in place. The alignment of AI (Artificial Intelligence), no-code and HI (Human Intelligence) makes it possible to embrace all the practical situations encountered by the teams in charge of real estate assets, with the flexibility and essential versatility.

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If this article interested you, you could also read this one: The impact of a new law decree for public buildings or go directly to our page dedicated to commercial buildings.