Smart School Buildings Automation - How Automation Can Help
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Smart School Buildings Automation - How Automation Can Help
New technologies, inventions, and innovations have made several things possible today, which many of you had never thought was possible a few decades ago. Better communication, high-speed internet connectivity, and globalization have created a tremendous awareness about conservation of resources, use of technology to enhance convenience while being ecofriendly. Intelligent and mechanized buildings have been gaining popularity every day.
Automation of buildings earlier controlled only climate inside buildings. However, with time, the need to be energy efficient, to understand when buildings are occupied and empty, whether a room had lights or no, to know if authorized people were entering the building, made companies develop a building automation system that offered a single solution to these needs.
Google, a major data company on the planet, recently paid over $3 billion for Nest Labs, a specialist in indoor heating control. The building automation business is now worth tens of billions of dollars globally – predicted to have a turnover $50 billion by 2018
Smart buildings such as smart homes, offices, and institutions, which till a few years ago were seen only in movies, have become a reality today. Nonstop advances in Technology, IT infrastructure, quick changes in climate, swift urbanization and the growth of alternate energy sources have helped to fuel constant development in the technology used for building automation. Mechanization, in the case of smart homes, smart schools, etc. offer comfort, security, efficient use of energy and more.
The topmost automation companies around the world are Siemens, ABB, Emerson Process Management, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, Honeywell Process Solutions, Mitsubishi Electric and others.
(Source: http://www2.emersonprocess.com/siteadmincenter/PM%20Articles/Control12_09_Top50.pdf)
Homes, schools, and businesses have used IoT to automate some parts of their spaces like automatic doors at malls, bio-metric sensors and door locks at workplaces and school labs to state-of-art alarm systems. However, automation is not restricted to these few uses alone; which is why people have begun using mechanization to control building and complexes in the last few years.
Need for smart school buildings:
Parents seek a good learning environment for their children as they will be spending a lot of time in the school. The atmosphere, especially the climate inside school buildings plays a major role in offering a great learning environ. Research suggests poor quality of air often inhibits the ability to learn among school children. Extremely cold or hot conditions can affect the child’s health.
The school management often spends more to maintain old and outdated air conditioners, fans, and ventilation systems in the school. That is why, offering a better environment to students with better quality of energy and other facilities is one of the most important tasks faced by the school management, planners, and the government today. Prof. Michael Krödel, Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences says, “Automation of Buildings at schools delivers a better environment for education and shelters the wallets of school maintenance bodies in the long run.”
Automation of a school means: Till a few years ago schools largely used software to help with their grading systems as well as to keep teachers abreast of new improvements or circulars sent by the education board and other governing bodies. However, all that changed when school management systems were introduced in the market.
A school management software is dynamic, clear and easy-to-use system, which can be combined easily with the present infrastructure of the buildings allowing schools to protect their investments well into the future. This system not only helps to monitor children and their educational activities, but they also helped to maintain the air within the building, keep a check on energy consumption in the school, maintain all HR functionalities in the school, manage student intake as well as keep all buildings in the compound connected.
How can automation help:
Identify ways to reduce costs: Unified building automation provides several advantages, which include reducing ecological effects, saving energy and consumption costs as well as improving structure safety and protection. Mechanized systems not only control structure functions, but they also collect data to aid building administrators to regulate ways to further lower costs and increase the efficacy and comfort of their buildings.
Save Energy and its consumption costs: It is projected that a building automation system can save anywhere between 5-30 percent on energy consumption costs for a school or a business by handling HVAC and lighting systems. HVAC and lighting are the two major energy consumers in contemporary structures and are typically the first structures to be mechanized.
A wireless BAS system can screen every sector of the building and make instantaneous alterations to sustain comfort while reducing the use of energy. Lighting in the school buildings can be lowered automatically in areas that are empty at specific times. Some mechanized systems use renewable resources to power their structures, in which case the schools save on non-renewable energy consumption too.
According to the 1997 Kyoto agreement, the nations are now dedicated to deal with their energy waste!
Ecological Influence: Since a BAS helps to lower the energy usage of a building, it indirectly helps to lower the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) into the air. The BAS can be connected into water system systems to screen and cut water usage. By removing waste, these systems help buildings use resources more proficiently and decrease their effect on the ecology. These systems also allow third parties, like the government departments to gather data and authenticate the energy consumption of the building.
Better People Comfort: Unconsciously, people are inclined to favor places with high comfort levels, that helps any business taking place at that site. A good internal atmospheric climate betters’ production while lowering the risk for unhealthy contact with gas releases, radon, bio-effluents, etc. that could cause severe illnesses, or lead to the development of asthma, asbestos, cancer in the long term.
Augment communiqué between education sponsors: An efficient BAS i.e. a school management system can make communication between people related to education processes such as manager, tutors, schoolchildren, and parents easy. The BAS helps teachers access student info quickly, create reports, develop lesson plans and work together with other educators from anyplace at any time. It also allows parents to know their child’s school performance such as absenteeism, homework, marks and school events.
Aid the administration and management: Several schools find the output of their teaching and administrative staff increases after the introduction of IT Solutions, which allow for things to be done much before they are due to take care of small issues in school management. This BAS improves the running of the administrative section that includes their tasks like transport maintenance, staff turnout, and management of hostel lodging, staff salary, petty expenditure and much more. Since most of the tasks are automated, manpower can be used for other school work.
Save time and money: As the school must manage information regarding thousands of users at a time and maintain several multiple communications and actions, use of paper in schools is very high when used to collect, save and distribute information. Paper usage rises when the copies of such information are required. The BAS allows the staff to maintain vital data in soft copies; saving on paper expenses. Sending copies electronically to the intended parties can help to save the time that can be used elsewhere.
Offers security: A BAS also controls the entry and exit of people inside the building or those visiting. This means additional security as only those authorized to enter the premises can do so while allowing to keep out unknown people. Such a system can help to keep children, teachers, and others safe inside the building.
Future of Automation:
The next few decades will see increasingly sophisticated automation systems being used in buildings. Quite possibly the buildings would be able to hold carbon dioxide; have sides made of photovoltaic films, solar tiles on roofs with programmed vertical farms that offer fresh, local produce to its occupants. Buildings will offer power and hot water with zero greenhouse emissions, with rainwater harvesting, smart water, and waste management systems.
Smart technology will link, observe and control these buildings. As the world becomes more developed and thickly inhabited, intelligent building technology will become vital to meet the needs of the society balanced against the necessity to preserve energy, decrease greenhouse gases and house billions with the efficient energy, comfort and the security they seek.