Page 18 - Climate Control News March 2020

Building Automation
How intelligent
is your building?
THE WORLD’S VERY FIRST INTERNATIONAL INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS INDEX (IB INDEX) IS CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT WITH VERSION 1 OF THE STANDARD TO BE RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR.
lowed the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of Washington (UW) to increase its central role in the index’s objective development and global data collection efforts.”
Properties currently being scored by the IB In- dex include 60 Martin Place, Sydney, which is owned by the Investa Property Group and Mi- crosoft’s Redmond Campus in Washington.
Microsoft is currently overhauling its 500-acre campus in Redmond, Washington and is investing billions of dollars in redeveloping its existing assets.
The development will take between five and seven years to complete, and includes 18 new buildings alongside new public or sporting spac- es, transportation infrastructure, and a 2-acre open plaza that accommodates 2,000 people.
Microsoft currently has 125 buildings at the Redmond Campus, and once the project is com- plete, this will rise to 131 buildings.
Jupp admits the Index hasn’t been an easy tool to create but intensive R&D has led to the devel- opment of a multi-criteria decision analysis method that allows users to map “what is an in- put or enabler of building intelligence.”
“To be able to quantify how intelligent a build- ing is requires an understanding of the different ways that a building can be considered intelli- gent. This includes all the IT-enabled products
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Sydney (UTS) Associate Professor, Julie Jupp, said the index is a technical framework and classification system to measure a building’s intelligence.
“This industry-first open technology standard uses qualitative and quantitative IB perfor- mance measures to rate a buildings relative in- telligence,” Jupp said.
“Utilising a state-of-the-art literature review, international stakeholder engagement and cali- bration against a global spectrum of smart buildings, the IB Index offers a technical frame- work and classification system upon which to support strategy development and decision making.”
University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Associate Professor Julie Jupp.
Jupp said an international not-for-profit in- dustry-sponsored body known as the Interna- tional Intelligent Buildings Organisation was created last year to administer and develop the IB Index.
She said the body will also provide education on its use, consultation on its application and on- going Research and Development (R&D) to en- sure the index stays abreast of latest industry and technological advances.
“The IB Index in its current form has been un- der development since late 2018. The first stage of the development was funded by Willow in col- laboration with EG Funds,” Jupp explained.
“Around mid-2019 Investa and Microsoft came on board as funding partners. This has al-
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