Paessler to launch SaaS for smart buildings

Smart buildings span a variety of industries, including office buildings, factories, shopping malls, hospitals, academic campuses, stadiums, airports, military bases, and residential buildings. The common factor in all these use cases is one: using digitalization to provide the best environment for humans.

For this, the building receives sensors and IoT devices that start to control functions such as access to parking spaces, temperature, light, and humidity of different spaces, security of both physical and digital access, blocking or releasing turnstiles. For the building manager, the main goal is to optimize processes and reduce costs.

Research conducted in 2018 by the EU Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) indicates that the use of Smart Building solutions can reduce building maintenance spending by 9 times. Achievements like these explain that, according to a 2019 MarketsandMarkets report, this market is expected to be worth $108 billion by 2025. In Europe, one of the most advanced regions in this discipline, 5.8 million IoT devices were employed in 2016 to support Smart Building processes.

But how to keep all this environment under control?

“Smart Building effectiveness depends on management capable of integrating and analysing a myriad of protocols, creating bridges between IT and OT technologies,” explains Luis Arís business development manager at Paessler LATAM. “It is recommended that monitoring data for all protocol types can be visualized in a single dashboard. According to the demand of the environment, it is also possible to develop dashboards focused on specific areas of the Smart Building, from the use of parking to lift controls,” adds the executive.

With this in mind, Paessler is preparing to launch a completely new solution for facility managers and building owners: the new SaaS solution “Paessler Building Monitor“.

With Paessler Building Monitor, building managers can quickly detect and remediate hazards such as gas leaks, fire, and mold. This contributes to substantial cost savings and prevents loss of property value. In addition, building monitoring makes it easier to save and optimize costs through improved energy consumption. Commercial buildings currently contribute directly and indirectly to a third of all global CO2 emissions. Business owners are turning to digital solutions in view of increasing regulation in the real estate market and to save both time and money.

Monitoring is based on building data that the system collects remotely via LPWAN technology. Wireless IoT sensors are installed locally in buildings and provide the measurement data that is used to determine conditions. This eliminates the need for analog on-site data acquisition and time-consuming appointments. 

The solution is characterized by its ease of installation and use. It does not require any programming knowledge. An intuitive wizard connects all IoT devices inside the building to the monitoring software. Administrators can start monitoring immediately thanks to application-specific ready templates. The software also offers an alarm function that automatically notifies users if a threshold value for a particular environmental condition is exceeded. All collected monitoring data can be exported for further analysis.

Most of the devices in use in the smart building rely on IP addressing. This communication protocol can be an open door to attacks by hackers, who can “hijack” the building and the people working in it. Therefore, it is essential to integrate digital security platforms with environmental monitoring solutions.

The Smart Building is an expanding concept – new sensors are being developed at this very moment, extending the digitalized control over this environment. It is essential to have an open monitoring platform that is also constantly expanding, in order to act in a predictive and preventive way to avoid failures in the environment.

Overall, IoT-based remote monitoring of assets and processes enables companies to reduce the time needed to detect, analyze and mitigate issues with critical assets and processes. They can also optimize human resources, increase the security of their operations and reduce operational costs. 

The first remote monitoring deployments are already delivering a positive ROI. However, they are only scratching the surface of remote monitoring’s potential. In the coming years, companies will increasingly be unleashing the innovation potential of remote monitoring to improve financial and environmental outcomes and provide value-added services to customers.