Over the last few months we have covered many aspects of “Home Automation” and how your home network can be extended to help integrate all aspects of controlling the safety and security of your environment. The term “Building Automation” has recently grown to include all aspects of how your office or commercial building can be integrated into a common monitoring and control environment. Here are just a few of the systems that can be monitored and controlled with a proper “Automation” architecture:
Heating, Air Conditioning, Water Systems, Alarms, Security, Evacuation Control, Mass Notification, Lighting, Power Management, Intrusion Detection, Video Surveillance, and Access Control.
Before the advent of the “Building Automation” movement each of these services was an isolated system with unique management requirements. The isolation of these individual services ended up costing a company thousands of dollars of unneeded expense due to the duplication of features. 2012 is a great time to start converting your office or commercial building to an ‘automation” architecture. Imagine being able to sit down to your desk and monitor your entire office and automate how all building services are delivered and utilized.
Over the next month we will break down the individual systems of a good ‘building automation’ architecture and then finally cover network security.
