Page 16 - Climate Control News Magazine July 2021

Building Management Systems:
What’s next?
PROPMODO.COM AUTHOR, RHYNE BROWN, EXPLAINS HOW MASTER BUILDING SYSTEMS INTEGRATION (MBSI) IS MORE THAN A TRENDING ACRONYM, IT IS A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO BUILDING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (BMS) THAT DOESN’T JUST FOCUS ON HEATING
AND COOLING.
THE BUILDING AUTOMATION mar- ket is dominated by a small group of large corporations such as Carrier, Trane and York.
These companies use the same ge- neric terms to describe their operating systems, building management system (BMS) or alterna-
tively building automation system (BAS).
While these systems can be good at energy op- timisation and comfort control, HVAC accounts for just 40 per cent of a standard commercial
building’s total energy use, leave a big gap to fill. What might replace BMS systems when it comes to building operations is what is called a
Master Building Systems Integration (MBSI). Still not a great acronym I know. But the im- portant thing is that it changes the focus of the building system to the entire building in a way that does not revolve around just heating and
cooling.
This shift is made possible by two shifts in
technology. Thanks to lots of investment over the past few decades, small, cost-effective elec- tronic sensors are available to detect tempera- ture, humidity, light, motion, water, air quality,
vibration, smells, and even specific sounds such as the discharge of a firearm.
In addition, some sensors have innovative op- erational control capabilities added that extend their usefulness beyond just recording and send- ing data. For example, it is now possible to con- vert old building systems, like relay switches in elevators and pneumatic thermostats to one with computer-based instructions.
Another significant advance is a specialised device that counts the number of humans in a building. While this may appear to be a trivial breakthrough, it has opened a new capability to allocate clean air and emergency services to ar- eas inside a building in proportion to where peo- ple are.
AUTONOMOUS ACTION
Sensors have become operational modifiers of buildings that now provide a way for ALL the pri- mary systems of a building to provide information to a computer and receive instructions in return.
Sensors that communicate in real-time enable the second significant advance, real Artificial In- telligence. To achieve the best result, AI needs
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