The buildings of the future will be self-aware. A senior scientist at Telecom Italia, Roberto de Bonis, presented in Belgium at the 4th International SMART Conference, the application of smart technology in so-called 'smart buildings.' According to the Italian researcher, the demand for smart city services will be increased by the Internet of Things, since more than 50 percent of the world's population are city dwellers. By 2050, this numbers are projected to reach 70 percent.
Enrico Vinciarelli and De Bonis presented in their study 'From Smart Metering to Smart City Infrastructure,' a scenario where an Internet of Things communication platform would be based on clusters of technologies, each exploiting different bandwidths. A huge amount of data could be handled and analyzed in real time by linking devices so that they can talk to each other. To be able to achieve this, cities will need both efficient storage and infrastructure for the information generated.
The Director of Research and Technology at BT, Chris Bilton, agreed that this area offer a huge potential for innovation. He explained that Internet of Things technologies can provide potential solutions to many pressing problems faced by most of organisations today. They are that are striving to improve personal well-being and quality of life, while at the same time enhancing productivity, efficiency, and creating economic growth.
Transport is one area that could be positively impacted by Internet of Things technology. Chris Bilton expressed his opinion that the future cities will have to include smart transport services for shared transport and journey planning assets. But, as Bilton explained, IoT technology can be even more sophisticated than this.
Providing an example, Builton said that the smart building could take its necessary power from built-in photovoltaic generation and could even adapt to known journey patterns by diverting locally generated power as backup for likely usage. This advanced features in the building of the near future will help reducing expenditure, drive down carbon footprint of the community, and make transport more affordable.
Smart tech buildings would provide another way for urban areas of the future to benefit from IoT and smart technology. These buildings of the future will be able adjust window settings and ventilation by reaction to data derived from sensor networks across the city. Information regarding prevailing weather conditions and cross-referencing of pollution levels in the area would facilitate adapting the buildings to the actual environmental conditions.
This offers a tremendous potential to change lives of million people living in the smart cities of the future. By embedding IoT technology within the building, smart cities will support social cohesion, will enable vulnerable and older people to live within their communities for longer, and support their fundamental needs.
