Edificios Inteligentes

Edificios inteligentesConversations for a Smarter Planet: 16 in a Series

Constructing a smarter planet, one building at a time.
Buildings have always been much more than roofs over our heads.Over the last century, as towers of steel reached higher into the sky and homes sprawled farther and farther into the surrounding landscape, our buildings not only housed burgeoning urban populations andgrowing economies — they also served as symbols of modernity and progress. Unfortunately, today’s offices, factories, stores and homes are also symbols of something else — waste and pollution. In theU.S., buildings consume 70% of all electricity, up to 50% of which is wasted. Lights blaze and air conditioners hum in empty offices at night, and lawn sprinklers turn on even during a rainstorm.Commercial buildings lose as much as 50% of the water that flows into them. By 2025, buildings will be the single largest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gasses on our planet. But on a smarterplanet we can think about buildings differently — seeing homes not just as living spaces, but as living systems; seeing offices not just as static structures where work is done, but as manifestations ofall the ways the world works. In a smart building, systems are not managed separately — they interoperate. Thousands of sensors can monitor everything from motion and temperature to humidity,precipitation, occupancy and light. The building doesn’t just coexist with nature — it harnesses it. Smart buildings can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 50% to 70% and save 30% to 50% in waterusage. Although today most attention is focused on smart homes, some of the most dramatic progress is being achieved in commercial developments around the world. The St. Regis hotel in Shanghaiintegrated 12 subsystems to create one intelligent building, with a ratio of energy costs to revenue below 5% (compared to 8% for other five-star hotels). GIB-Services in Switzerland is using excess heat...