What is a smart building?


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Issue 174 / December 2014

AV INTEGRATION IN A NETWORKED WORLD www.installation-international.com

Overhead surge

Drones – your next business opportunity? p16

Video distribution

Keep up with rapidly changing tech p28

SHIP SHAPE

Leaving from where?

Ensuring intelligibility in transport hubs p34

How cruise liner AV keeps running, miles from home p40

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17/11/2014 16:32

WELCOME 03

December 2014

Editor’s comment I

Paddy Baker, Editor [email protected]

think I’ve written here before about how easy it can be to forget that the tablet computer – which has had such an impact on so many of our lives both as a multifunctional personal device and as an installed control surface – has been in existence for less than five years: Apple launched the iPad in April 2010. And having recently watched Benedict Cumberbatch playing World War II codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, I was reminded that programmable computers are still pretty new too, having come about within the lifetimes of people who are still with us today. So even though it’s hard to find any aspect of our lives that isn’t touched by IT in some way, my belief is that we’re still only at the start of what it can achieve.

‘Only the computer world has the ability to generate such massive step-changes in performance’ Our opinion columns this month feature three very different types of technology. On page 18, Stephen Patterson writes about his vision for smart buildings that are properly tuned to the needs of the people within them; Rob Lane (p14) looks at the possibilities afforded by Minority Report-inspired gestural input devices; and Bob Snyder (p16) discusses the opportunities offered by drones – in a nutshell, they have the potential to drive widespread deployment of video in a similar way to what digital cameras have done for still images. What these diverse technologies, at different stages of development, share is that they all have IT of one kind or another at their heart. It’s not surprising that IT is continuing to move centre stage in these developments, and so many others, as only the computer world has the ability to generate such massive step-changes in performance. As Turing says at one point in The Imitation Game, to break the Enigma code for a single day (it was reconfigured each morning) by going through all the possible combinations manually would have take 10 people 20 years. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that a solution using machine-based intelligence was the only feasible one. And just as the Bletchley Park machines made the unthinkable possible, so I believe that intelligent AV provision is going to take us into areas that we have barely imagined so far. I wonder who they’ll be making films about in another 70 years’ time?

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Subscriptions to Installation are free to qualified readers. Register online at www.installation-international.com/subscribe Installation is published 12 times a year by NewBay Media London, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LR, England Editorial tel: +44 (0)20 7354 6002 Sales tel: +44 (0)20 7354 6000 Please send press material to [email protected] Circulation & subscription enquiries Tel: +44 (0)1580 883848 Email: [email protected] Editor: Paddy Baker [email protected]

US sales – Executive vice president: Adam Goldstein [email protected]

Managing editor: Joanne Ruddock [email protected]

Production manager: Jason Dowie [email protected]

Staff writer: Duncan Proctor [email protected]

Digital content manager: Tim Frost [email protected]

Designer: Tom Carpenter [email protected]

Publisher: Steve Connolly

Sales manager: Gurpreet Purewal [email protected]

Contributors: David Davies, Rob Lane, Ian McMurray, Steve Montgomery, Stephen Patterson, Bob Snyder

Account manager: Peter McCarthy [email protected]

Special thanks: Ginny Goudy, Charlotte Myer, Ramzi Shakra

© NewBay Media 2014. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owners. Printed by Pensord Press, Wales

Print ISSN: 2050-6104

Online ISSN: 2052-2401

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17/11/2014 15:04

18 OPINION: ON THE AGENDA December 2014

Stephen Patterson What is a smart building?

Too often, the industry follows too narrow a definition, which doesn’t explore the full potential of smart technology – or what AV companies can deliver

T

he technology of ‘smart buildings’ is increasingly a discussion topic. Unfortunately – all too often – this seems simply to be in reference to reducing the power consumption of a building, be that for green credentials or financial gain. While a lofty aim in its own right, it’s hardly smart. Paul Fletcher (@thrutl), the architect and thought leader on Smart in the built environment, suggests that a smart building is simply one in which the user doesn’t feel dumb! From AV, to lighting, to HVAC, how often do we fail to deliver on that – let alone any kind of integrated Smart on top? Shouldn’t a smart building be one that has some autonomy, is capable of learning from its surroundings and most importantly interacts with what may be the most expensive asset in the building – people – to maximise the use of all resources, not just energy? Here’s an example. The security barrier becomes the point of entry to the building world. I swipe my pass, the building knows I’m here and can begin to respond to my presence. The lights in my office turn on, my PC wakes from its slumber and my calendar updates as my presence is noted on internal UC platforms. In a hotdesk environment the system may allocate me a desk, and the digital signage can guide me, having programmed my phone by the time I arrive there. As the system is aware of my diary, it recognises I have a meeting, and 15 minutes in advance of the start time it compares building occupancy to the invite list, to automatically allocate a room – ensuring optimal use of physical resource. I arrive at my meeting room, expecting the AV systems to have performed a self-test and pre-dialled my

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VC call. Biamp Systems recently conducted a study that suggested up to 10 minutes of every 60-minute meeting is wasted trying to make the technology work – this equates to around $5.5 billion lost per year. It is evident how smart use of technology can make huge inroads into productivity, resource utilisation and energy saving. But perhaps even this is only scratching the surface of what Smart could really be. Meeting rooms and spaces in a building are often still considered as self-contained environments, warranting the deployment of technology to deliver on a predefined experience. However, with dynamism appearing to pervade every aspect of life, it seems premature to assume that we know how that space is going to be used in the future – hence the deployment of multi-use and reconfigurable spaces. To deliver this, technology must be more flexible and available than ever. IP-based control, and more importantly media traffic, are at the heart of an ‘anything, anywhere, at any time’ methodology. Wireless technologies and location-aware equipment can also play a part in allowing rooms to automatically configure, based on the location of hardware. This reconfiguration ability and AV service availability is required to deliver the flexibility that is increasingly critical in the future of business, particularly in relation to mobile/remote workers and the need for evolving collaboration. With this comes the concept that physical offices will evolve into places for hosting multi-site, in-person meetings, rather than being a location for individual work. User experience and interaction with equipment is also an area requiring development,

and one which we may have to consider as part of a system’s operational ‘reliability’ – as much as the uptime of physical equipment. If an employee moves from campus A to campus B and has to re-learn how to operate the technology, from a design perspective we have failed. Delivering this sort of reliable equipment use is crucial in avoiding wasted time, money or both.

‘Surely we, the AV industry, are best placed to capitalise on this complete integration of building technology’

A closing thought: surely we, the AV industry, are best placed to capitalise on this complete integration of building technology. After all, it is what we do: take many systems speaking many different protocols on several different physical communication media, and deliver a front end that makes it simple. I would venture to suggest that no other discipline involved in the construction trades has this wealth of experience. Shouldn’t we be positioning ourselves to lead this ‘total technology integration’ rather than watching from the sidelines? Stephen Patterson is regional manager, western Europe, at Biamp Systems. This article is based on his presentation at the Smart Building Conference in London in October. www.biamp.com

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