Cities truly become 'smart' when all the main components of a city communicate with each other and this data is used in a clever way. Smart buildings form indispensable links within smart cities. Edwin Koose, business analyst Smart Building TU Delft, talks about his experiences in developing a smart campus, the advantages of such a building and the development of smart cities in general. During the upcoming Interaction between the branches session Koose will delve deeper into the theme of smart cities.
By: Dimitri Reijerman
In the development of smart buildings, IT and the construction world come together. Koose, partly due to his background, has knowledge of both professional groups: “My family comes from work environments where people say: 'there is Real worked'. I'm talking about construction. I myself had 'no work', because I was active in IT. But I came into contact with the components of construction a lot. That way I saw what was happening there and which systems were used. I thought: those things can be done differently. From IT I see other infrastructures emerging. From CISCO, with whom I worked, we started the first trajectories for integrating systems in a building.”
With this background, Koose has specialized in an advisory role between the ICT world and companies that focus on real estate development. He fulfills this role, in addition to being director of the temporary employment agency Ventus IT Professionals BV, at the TU Delft. His official title at the university is therefore business analyst smart building. He says: “I provide advice and am a quartermaster for an implementation. If you look at the construction side, for example, climate installations and sun blinds are often set up by parties such as Johnson Controls, Honeywell or Siemens, while the network infrastructure for the office environment is done by CISCO. I then provide advice on how to bring this together. Because if you simply ask the market: 'I want a smart building', they will look at you blankly.”
Three crucial steps
According to Koose, there are three steps that need to be taken when setting up a smart building: “You start with the foundation: I want everything connected to one IP infrastructure, where the lighting, the sun protection, the climate control system, the access control systems and the office automation come together. Based on this infrastructure, everything can be accessed from one central point. When everything comes together, phase one is complete. With smart analytics, which is phase two, you can then see how a building is used in practice, based on data analysis. This allows you to monitor energy consumption. In phase three, you come up with additional smart applications for this. Then you can use your smartphone to operate the lighting and the climate control system. But you can also think of smart parking and smart cleaning.”
For the development and realization of a smart campus complex at TU Delft, which will be ready in 2020, these three steps have been included in detail and elaborated in various programs of requirements and manuals. The so-called Echo complex must become a model of sustainability by realizing an energy-neutral design. For this, not only solar panels are installed on the roof, the connection with smartphones of students and employees is also important.
App-driven
In order to be able to make the connection between a brand new interfaculty education building and the end user, pilots are already being held at TU Delft with mobile apps. Koose: “There are now various small proof of concepts running to test the technology. A student is picked up by a mobile app at the front door and guided to the lecture. The system can see where there are free study places. We want to go further. Even to making an appointment with your professor and paying in the canteen with your mobile phone. Because if you want it to be intelligent, it has to be app-driven in this day and age. Otherwise it won't work.”
Thanks to the presence of building data, energy conservation can also be further worked on. According to Koose, it is possible, for example, to guide students to the top floor on quiet days. In this way, the other floors require less or no lighting and heating.
With his background and work experience at the intersection of construction and ICT, Koose can give some concrete advice to parties that also want to realize smart buildings. “Certainly with regard to new construction, you can save a lot of money by simplifying the cabling,” says the business analyst. “And avoid silos: everything must be able to talk to each other. From there, you can simplify management. Finally, with this basis, you can automate further much more easily.”
Looking at the broader picture, Koose also sees smart cities slowly but surely emerging in the Netherlands. “From my expertise: intelligent buildings are an integral part of the smart city infrastructure,” he says. “The city gets its information mainly from a building. Think, for example, of flex offices where the city knows: it is now extremely busy and you have to go to the office, perhaps it is more convenient to meet at the edge of the city. Your smartphone already reserves a room there. And the Netherlands has a good starting position for this type of smart city. We have a good IT infrastructure and sufficient data scientists available, but the combination with smart buildings is still rare. That is again because we still have relatively few smart buildings. But that will certainly change in the coming years.”
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