Building automation : Analysing the indigences  

            Businesses face a range of threats, including fraud, theft, burglary, vandalism and terrorism. Building owners need to draft their assessment analysis internally or with help from outside professionals to make sure policies and solutions are customized for the particular building.

Securing valuable assets and protecting people’s safety are required for successful business. Increased awareness for cost and efficiency among corporations stimulates market growth for building automation, security and fire solutions. Business is tied closely to decision making. Generating the biggest bang for the buck is especially important during an economic downturn. Although the financial crisis worldwide has curtailed corporate spending and delayed some major projects, the security market continues to grow, despite a slackening in demand, security for office buildings continue to boom. “The growth rate for commercial building security is still expanding, although it has slowed down compared to what it was in 2008 and 2009.

External threats
Businesses face a range of threats, including fraud, theft, burglary, vandalism and terrorism. Building owners need to draft their assessment analysis internally or with help from outside professionals to make sure policies and solutions are customized for the particular building.

Minimising theft
Preventing theft means effective access control must be implemented, making it a concern for commercial buildings. Buildings that host multiple companies emphasize integration of physical and logical access control. Integration between surveillance cameras, VMS and third-party devices can be made easier using standard IP protocols, alarms also play an important role in total solutions. Intrusion is a priority, especially intrusion detection by night when there is nobody inside the building. As security threats change during the day at the same location, systems can be managed accordingly. Certain rooms that are protected during business hours by access control and video surveillance can be watched by intrusion and video surveillance outside operation hours.

Combating terrorism
Deliberate acts of violence can result in massive casualties. A bomb could cause fire and cause injury or fatalities. Natural hazards, such as earthquakes or floods, pose the same risks. The outcomes and required responses for these scenarios are largely the same. Buildings should have tailored security solutions for possible terrorist events. Every customer or business has different needs, so the systems for prevention, detection, containment and the escape plan must be designed carefully to ensure building and people safety. Tenants can be efficiently notified with PA and voice alarms integrated with fire, building management systems, touch panels, PC call stations and automatic announcement systems.

Emergency response
When faced with safety or suspicious activities, building management should contact the authorities. In Norway, only police has the right to stop an intruder. Therefore, whether a security system can efficiently notify the police force in case of a break-in is very important. There are many factors to consider when evacuating a location, including the nature of the threat, the fastest route to safety, and the elimination of potentially disastrous bottlenecks. With situational awareness, firefighters can plan and act more efficiently. Locations of readers, types of door locks and antipassback systems should be considered.

Building automation
Building automation with a building management system (BMS) controls and minimizes energy consumption. However, the BMS has often been left to operate with the parameters that were set during its initial installation, according to the actual usage of a facility including occupant information, current weather conditions, heating and cooling load building automation automatically implements strategies to improve efficiency .A BMS needs to be fine-tuned on a continuous basis if savings are to be made and sustained.

Energy saving
Buildings that utilize green security solutions benefit from operational cost reduction and enhancement of their brand and corporate image, an integrated approach to energy management in commercial buildings is important if energy costs and carbon emissions reduction are to be achieved. Around 75 percent of the world’s electric energy is used by buildings and approximately 50 percent of it is used in nonresidential buildings, energy management software monitors and reports energy performance and usage, making it crucial for building automation to track energy consumption.

Climate control
HVAC provides optimal comfort for occupants and is the largest energy load in a building. According to the US Department of Energy, energy consumption from HVAC systems accounts for 40 percent of the total energy used in buildings, to reduce energy and be more environmentally friendly, commercial buildings have several options. Boiler plant replacement and upgrades, optimizing operating temperatures and chiller operation, variable speed drives on pump motors and thermostatic valves on radiators are separate ECMs (Energy Conservation Measures) considered for energy optimization.

Lighting control
Lighting constitutes about 30 to 35 percent of the total energy load in commercial buildings, up to 50 percent of this energy is wasted either by inefficient lighting, occupants being careless about their lighting habits or both.  Lighting energy consumption can be reduced by 15 to 30 percent if improvements are made. These include replacing lamps with energy efficient ones, and PIR and motion sensors within the BMS. Other options include intelligent blind control, which automatically detects lighting levels inside and adjust blinds to save energy during daytime. Surveillance cameras using PoE technology can reduce energy consumption. Buildings with PoE switches need fewer power supply points. Well-designed cameras consume less energy and emit less heat.

Planning
The five components of an effective building security program are: commitment from management; assessment of risk; creating and auditing security policies and procedures; installation of security systems and upgrades; and establishment of security training. Ideally, the first two are part of the initial design, including choice of location. While security systems must protect valuable assets and human lives, building owners prefer systems to be as invisible and unobtrusive as possible. Key factors are location, tenant mix and people-vehicular flow, they determine potential security risks, which should be ranked from low to high. An integrated security solution usually includes access control, monitoring, surveillance, lighting and parking lot control. The solution should be open for third-party integration and scalable for system upgrades. Structured cabling systems can facilitate the scalability of video surveillance. When designing security and safety measures for commercial buildings, country specific regulations must be considered.

Challenges
Challenges for commercial building security and safety include slow market adoption for building automation. The digital era ushers in challenges for IP migration, such as interoperability and compatibility of IP based systems. Finally, infrastructure design for security must strike a balance between security, safety and convenience. Building automation has been on the market for a long time, but not many buildings have it implemented, currently, market acceptance for building automation technology is not high, though it is increasing with a promising future. Commercial buildings need to balance the creation of a secure environment for tenants, while maintaining an inviting and pleasant environment for employees and visitors.

Outlook
In the short term, businesses are spending more cautiously. Existing systems are used longer with investments made in classic security and mixed systems. As a result, requirements for maintenance and service will increase, monitoring the perimeter will be a focus for commercial buildings. There will be an increase in requests for outdoor day-night cameras for external building surveillance. Networking will be a growing trend. Buildings are more and more prewired for Ethernet networks, then the peripherals need to be ‘native IP.’ In new buildings, there are fewer cables dedicated to security installations. As convergence grows, it will be implemented in more commercial buildings around the world, adding convenience, safety and security.