Buildings are the essence of smart cities

Earlier this month Siemens hosted the Digitalization Forum to discuss the trends and technologies that will underpin Australia’s transition to intelligent infrastructure and the future of manufacturing.

In our dedicated session for Building Technologies we focused on smart buildings shaping the future and the various innovations of today that defines the buildings of tomorrow. This is what we call creating perfect places.

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review this week (watch this space for updates) I was talking about how buildings become true assets with the opportunities digitalization enables. With digitally connected centres and transforming big data into smart data, we can optimize our usage and drastically reduce our costs. Individuals currently spend around 90% of their time in buildings, buildings account for 40% of global energy consumption and on average operating costs account for 80% of total building costs. Integrating management sub-systems into a single building management system can result in energy savings up to 40%.

In order to achieve this, we must focus on data – which I believe is - is the foundation of smart buildings and the oil of the 21st century. (See more on this in my previous post). Siemens’ partnership with IBM leads to cutting edge cloud-based solutions that will leverage the building expertise of Siemens and IBM Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to maximize the potential of connected buildings.

Why is this important and why it is especially relevant to Australia? Because being one of the most urbanised countries most of our population lives in cities. Siemens aims to develop and deliver technologies which create perfect places for every individuals, whether they are working in an office, travelling from an airport, recovering in a hospital or resting at home. Optimizing all environment with monitoring user behaviour, controlling features such as lighting, ventilation, air conditioning, heating and safety systems – and do this real time - would not only save on environmental impact and running cost but also improves on the customers’ comfort and well-being and you cannot put a price tag on that. This is Ingenuity for Life.

Thank you to our panel for a great discussion at the Digitalization Forum on digitalization trends. From right: @Prof.Ron Wakefield , @James Bennett, @Gihan Perera and myself.