Page 476 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

The labour components required to monitor and manage a building are clearly dramatically reduced
when the building network allows a single console to monitor all aspects of the building while fully
meeting all of the requirements which may be applicable for monitoring of HVAC, fire and security
considerations.
One evaluation tool which was developed some years ago and which is currently undergoing
revisions is the building intelligence quotient (BIQ) Tool. The BIQ was developed on the assumption
that communications is the dominant characteristic of any intelligent building.

The emphasis on communications however, which is prevalent in the original BIQ, seems to
disregard some of the economic benefits available as a result of a more efficient building. Options
such as the ability to select the least expensive fuel or to generate local power will, for example,
have a significant impact on the bottom line costs of running a building and yet will also depend
heavily on the building's intelligence.

2.2 Buildings versus Community

Emphasis in this report is focussed on the intelligence of a building. Ultimately an intelligent building
does not need to limit its intelligence or local capacity to a single building. A greater benefit in all
aspects will clearly accrue, if a single building can enjoy the benefits of joining one building into
multiple buildings thereby forming a community, a campus, or possibly even a city. As it is evident
to many tenants of rental properties there is a trend to such centralized operating facilities which
has been adopted by many building operators and owners. For example, universities are a typical
campus facility, which in many cases is monitored and controlled by a central facility. Frequently
however, the interest of the central control facility is limited to a specific aspect of the campus e.g.,
security or computer networking for student or library use.
The benefit of an intelligent building networked into an entire campus has been demonstrated in a
number of situations including some components of the Canadian government managed through
the Public Works and Government Services (PWGSC) or large shopping centre operators, both of
which manage very substantial real estate portfolios and are anxious to keep their operations as
efficient and economical as possible. Thus, it is not unusual in such situations for the call for service
related to lighting or HVAC to end up in a central facility where the call centre is staffed by technical
experts who are not only able to understand the problem remotely but may also be able to address
and correct the problem. There are many examples in the communications industry where the trend
to centralize, often off‐shore, call centres has been legion.

Several call centres operate in India, El Salvador, Egypt, the Philippines, etc., where calls related to
many aspects of our society are addressed. The technicians in these low labour cost facilities have
full network access to the corporate entities, accounts, control facilities, and have the ability to run
diagnostics and if required, dispatch the local technician to address a problem. These local
technicians will then arrive with the diagnostics completed and with any required parts in hand to
address the original complaint. The corporate entity considers that this is part of an intelligent
environment in which they can deliver a solution more effectively, more economically, and if they
are resourceful they can even track individual failure rates and operate in conjunction with the
original equipment manufacturer to improve reliability and thereby to further lower their costs.

The argument from the perspective of the operators (or owners) is that reducing their overhead in
this manner provides an incentive to providing cost effective, speedy and competitive solutions to
the market place. The community i.e., campus or city, becomes a wired entity. The network which
serves a large group of users can be designed to be extraordinarily reliable without needing any
continuous staffing or maintenance to ensure that reliability.

466 ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications