Methods for Achieving Meaningful Open Communication between Bldg Control Systems

CIBSE Technical Symposium, DeMontfort University, Leicester UK
6th and 7th September 2011

Building automation systems need to exchange meaningful information with the occupier’s business information systems to deliver the advanced functions that occupiers require.
Much recent product and standards development such as the integration of BACnet and XML is pursuing a bottom-up approach which improves the openness of building automation software and makes it easier to extract data from these systems. However, whilst this may deliver useful solutions on larger projects it is too software intensive for small to medium projects and generally unattractive to building developers and owners.
Many designers expected the universal adoption of IP networking for high-level communication with building control systems would solve most of the problems. However, IP only addresses the lower levels of the 7-layer networking model and meaningful information is at the highest level.
Larger projects and especially universities are using Microsoft BizTalk and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)
to provide the connectivity between business systems and building automation systems. This may eventually lead to the suppliers of BMS, CCTV, intruder alarm and access control systems providing open access to their software.
However, the university sector is only a small part of the market and the major building control, automation players would prefer to sell building developers / owners a ‘complete’ solution that includes all BMS, CCTV, intruder alarm, and access control functions.