uted intelligence, which will ensure, at the same time, cost ... intelligence to energy and environmental solutions .... nologies and power grids, to wit, by the.
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INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS
uITALIAN TECHNOLOGY IN THE HEART OF NEW YORK
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fficiency and safety will drive the design of buildings of the future – true vertical cities endowed with distributed intelligence, which will ensure, at the same time, cost savings, increased comfort and compliance with high environmental standards. The Finmeccanica Group, mainly through Selex ES, plans to meet the challenge of urban sustainability by offering integrated technologies and skills that will improve the lives of people and the livability of large metropolitan areas. A big step forward was taken right in the heart of the most important city in the
world, New York City. In fact, Selex ES has recently signed an agreement to cooperate with Rudin Management, a long-established, privately owned real estate company that owns 15 million square feet of commercial and residential property in Manhattan, on the optimization of energy consumption and management of 16 commercial buildings in the Big Apple through a new software platform called DiBOSS (Digital Building Operating System Solution). On the occasion of Finmeccanica Day, last May, the project was presented the special “Sustainability” recognition of the 2012 Innovation Award, as it will give new life to 16 New York commercial buildings in the coming months, expanding the results of testing
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already underway on two pilot buildings. The mastermind of the project is Mattia Cavanna (Head of Finmeccanica’s New Initiatives Unit), who has been working with an international inter-company team comprised of Finmeccanica (Luca Giannicchi and Giuliano Mameli), Selex ES (Roberto Reina, Vincenzo Mauro, Giampaolo Frugone, Stefano Masciangelo, Paul Beck, Chris Axcell, Micheal Briggs and Francesco Calabro) and ELSAG North America (Bill Niewkerk, Todd Child, Antoine Cortezi, Bruce Sher and Nate Maloney). Rudin Management Company had an innovative idea: it wanted to make its commercial buildings smarter and it wanted to equip their customers with the necessary tools to help better influence the consump-
tion of energy in a positive way. In other words, it wanted its buildings to be more technologically advanced and environmentally sustainable, in respect to both those who live in them and the city in which they are located. The customer was not satisfied with the traditional approaches and solutions available on the market. Because it believed that those involved in aerospace, defense and security would be able to provide the best solution to the problem, Rudin’s management decided to steer away from traditional suppliers and to rely on a solid group of companies willing to invest together to achieve ambitious solutions and deliver a building operating system that would meet their needs. Because it is necessary to address sustain-
ability issues with a multidisciplinary approach, through across-the-board methods that combine technology, engineering, physics, statistics, biology and social sciences, a group engaged in high technology areas, such as Finmeccanica, has tools and a wealth of knowledge that few others possess to develop a building operating system. The convergence of interests between Rudin Management and Selex ES in developing radically innovative energy solutions was further enhanced by the participation in the program of the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University, in New York, which has extensive longtime experience in applying artificial intelligence to energy and environmental solutions through the development of algo-
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rithms and methodologies for machine learning and forecasting. Rudin had already been collaborating with Columbia and filed patent applications outlining what a BOS should consist of. The proposed innovations are of two types. The first innovation, which is more traditional, albeit original in the way it is applied, consists in pooling all systems and sensors found in “vertical cities”, large commercial buildings that host thousands of people every day. In this way, it was possible to ensure that all complex systems managing specific functions speak the same language. Distribution of electricity and heat, management of the elevators, access control, fire control and the ICT backbone are all treated as ganglia of a single central nervous
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technologies and energy storage, and promotion of electric mobility. The goal will be to turn commercial buildings into cells of a larger, more complex and intelligent living organism, such as the city where they are located. In the near future this solution will be offered on an international scale, not only to real estate management companies, but also to airports, train stations and military
bases, which will benefit from aggregate information control on multiple levels. This project is yet another initiative among others undertaken by the Group in the wake of smart solutions based on the integrated management Planet Inspired Solutions, i.e. the portfolio of technological solutions designed to address the challenges of sustainability. In this array of offerings, which has generated a significant portion of rev-
enue in 2012, there are technological solutions and platforms for the following areas: Earth Observation, Natural Resources, Smart Energy, Smart Mobility, Education & Health Care, Environmental & Security Response. A distinctive range of solutions positioning Finmeccanica among world market leaders in smart solutions.
The challenges of urban sustainability
system within a smart living organism, controlled by a single ‘brain’. In this respect, it is evident how important the interconnections are, which Columbia University was able to establish among technology, sustainability and medical science. These connections gave rise to matrices and algorithms used for energy monitoring. In terms of integration, the great experience acquired by the Finmeccanica Group in the design of platforms for air, maritime and rail traffic control, and in the implementation of solutions for the coordination of civil protection or satellites control, allowed Selex ES to effectively handle the integration of massive amounts of data related to the buildings. This information, which is gathered from heterogeneous and distributed systems, is processed and dispatched in real time to those who are responsible for the buildings’ operations via Di-BOSS’ “cockpit style” user interface.
The second kind of innovation – perhaps the most interesting – is the ability of the system being developed to ‘learn’ from the behavior of a commercial building, seen as a living organism, and then readjust its functionalities according to needs and behaviors, with three major areas in mind: energy saving, comfort and safety. For all practical purposes, this is an intelligent system that learns from experience, and is able to identify problems and propose solutions and recommendations. A notable example is given by processes that allow the ‘brain’ to identify the optimal time for turning on air conditioning systems, varying it in accordance with behaviors recorded in the past and the number of users present in the building at a given time, depending on weather forecasts and the state of equipment on a specific day of the year. This allows for a reduction of energy con-
sumption and greenhouse gas emissions – that’s sustainability! The size of this reduction is still being measured, but it is expected that it will easily reach a doubledigit percentage, thereby allowing Rudin Management to pay back its investment in a short period of time. Additionally, DiBOSS offers a module which allows the sharing of data directly with tenants so they can monitor individual consumption and participate at the tenant level with their own reduction planning. The next developments will involve the possibility of exchanging information between the commercial buildings – and comparable infrastructure – and the local power grid, a request already made by New York’s grid operator, which is aiming to achieve collaborative demand-response management of power, improved responsiveness in the event of power failure, greater integration between renewable
The challenges and opportunities that characterize our times raise a fundamental question: how can we use energy more efficiently? How can we make our buildings more sustainable and equip consumers with tools enabling them to make clever energy choices? How do we solve to 100 percent of the energy consumption dilemma and influence positive decision making and behavioral changes in people’s patterns? It is necessary that we find a way to rationalize scarce resources, bearing in mind the first law of thermodynamics: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can only be transformed. I am convinced, in fact, that technology is the engine that
will lead America out of the economic recession. This same technology can make the country energy independent and our buildings more sustainable. Large real estate companies continue – rightly or wrongly – to be held responsible for monitoring, measuring and managing energy consumption by our customers. We should reverse the approach, giving consumers tools that show them what they consume and thus stimulate changes in their habits and behavior in terms of energy consumption. We are convinced that big changes will be triggered by the way in which we, real estate companies, will integrate ICT technologies and power grids, to wit, by the way in which we will enable continuous exchange of data between electrical applications, such as sensors, pumps, air conditioners, lighting and boilers, with servers and routers that are able to extrapolate this data and transform it into useful in-
Above: Di-BOSS: real time energy monitoring and decision support tools
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formation, viewable through intuitive graphical interfaces. This will allow everyone to check consumption in real time, to make informed choices and to automatically manage systems, including remotely via smart phones or tablets. The convergence of IT and energy networks represents a real revolution that will allow cities, such as New York, to further expand their ability to create wealth, and could serve as a model for other international cities. Our design and experimental initiatives for Urban Technological Innovation, initiated by Mayor Bloomberg, are playing a crucial role in the development of our city and in making it possible for the world, as we know it today, to change for the better. John J. Gilbert, Rudin Management COO and member of the REBNY energy task force
