The market for smart structures in buildings, bridges and tunnels is about to take off as new business cases for deployment of smart structures begin to appear. Traditionally smart structures have been used to provide disaster avoidance, especially through the use of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems; themselves a rapidly growing market. However, we are now seeing the functionality of smart structures expand to include improving enhanced energy efficiency, lowering the cost of construction, increasing the lifespan of the building and even improving the aesthetics of the building.

These new developments fit in very well with the current buzz about the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and smart cities and we believe this megatrend will help boost the prospects for smart structures in the construction industry worldwide. As a result we expect to see important new revenue generation potential for suppliers of smart materials, building materials firms, SHM system suppliers, energy companies and the construction firms themselves.

Integrated Building Systems (IBS)—which merge together all of a building’s systems, including lighting, security and fire and life safety—represent tremendous opportunities for electrical contractors; it is a market that will eventually out-grow the traditional electrical market. Success will depend on the electrical contractor being able to provide value to the customer and demonstrate that the final integrated product will fulfill its needs.

There are various ways that a building’s systems can be integrated, but they all rely on communications protocols, such as BACnet, LonWorks, Modbus and, for lighting, Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI).

BACnet is a U.S. national standard, a European prestandard and an ISO global standard; it was developed under the sponsorship of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). It is a data communication protocol for building automation and controls networks, and its governing set of rules cover everything from what kind of cable to use to how to perform a particular request or command in a standard way.

LonWorks, developed by Echelon Corp., San Jose, Calif., is a flexible and expandable standards-based control networking platform upon which manufacturers can build products and applications. Once called LonTalk, the LonWorks platform is an international standard, alternatively known as ANSI/EIA709.1, SEMI E56.5, IEEE 1493-L and EN14908, among others. As an open technology, LonWorks allows devices from one manufacturer to communicate directly with products from another manufacturer.

Designed by Modicon for use with its programmable logic controllers (PLC), Modbus is a communications protocol that has almost become a de facto standard in industry, since it represents the most commonly available means of connecting almost any industrial electronic device. Modbus is used in master-slave applications to monitor and program devices, to communicate between intelligent devices and sensors and to monitor field devices. It is also used in applications where wireless communication is required.

 

On the other hand, DALI is a dedicated protocol purely for lighting control. However, it is effective for setting scenes and for getting feedback concerning faulty light sources. This makes the technology useful to tie into building automation systems where remote supervising and service reports are required.

Systems integration product managers for Siemens Building Technologies, Buffalo Grove, Ill., the choice of a communications protocol when designing an integrated building depends on the systems being considered.

However, at the most basic level, building systems are integrated through sensors and controls that allow individuals to program specific lighting and environmental scenarios for their spaces, LonWorks Infrastructure.

There are two fundamental methods of building integration; native takes parts from different suppliers and integrates them to make a single homogenous system, while system-level means building separate, discrete and fully functioning systems, such as lighting, security, etc., and then tying them together at the system level. However, using the system-level approach to building integration means that the fully functional system from each manufacturer can then use the correct communication protocol to tie the systems together.

True integration means finding commonalities between building systems and using the appropriate communication protocols to program them to provide cooperative sequences of operations that offer increased value to the building owner. Integration is a continuum from mere communication to interoperability and interchangeability that provides the building owner with a value proposition.

However, it is estimated that less than half of completed IBS systems use the full potential of integration. A building’s integrated system is more likely to be separate systems that share the same network or platform, but aren’t actually programmed to interact with each other fully.

Then again, as the IBS market grows and matures, more and more smart devices are being developed that are Internet protocol (IP) enabled and not proprietary, which allow building owners to integrate similar systems into the building management network for the purpose of having centralized oversight and operation of the building’s different systems.

Smart devices include lighting sensors, occupancy sensors, and HVAC equipment that communicate with each other over the building’s Ethernet and provide sophisticated programming that automates the interoperability of different systems.