Smarts are coming to everything: Consumers are now familiar with smartphones, smart cars, and smart homes. What about the segment of buildings and infrastructure?
Buildings can be considered our “second skin,” since we spend about 80 percent of our lives in them. Up until recently, buildings were considered a depreciating asset. But is it possible that buildings of the future will be a strategic asset — that they will operate in an intelligent way to be productive facility managers and monetizable for real estate owners? Is it possible that the traditionally conservative and risk-averse building and construction industry would leverage the latest technologies, such as the IoT, big data, cloud computing, data analytics, deep learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), for the benefits of saving energy, reducing operational expenditures, increasing occupancy comfort, and — most importantly — meeting increasingly stringent global regulations and sustainability standards?