Smart buildings are now a reality and bring new concepts to the table for thinking about security technology in a smart building environment.
Q: Our company is considering building a new HQ facility that will be a smart building. How will that change what we do with our security system technology?
A: It should change your system design thinking dramatically because you will need to establish an evolvable security technology infrastructure so that – like the building, it will be part of – it can keep up with the rapid advancement of technologies.
You will also need to work in very close collaboration with your IT function and with building engineering staff, due to the extremely high level of integration that will be involved between the electronic security systems and other building systems. To give you an idea of some of the security integrations that will be involved, view the five smart building videos on this page: bit.ly/led-lighting-opp.
For example, the building design should include luminous carpeting (www.luminous-carpets.com), a four-year-old technology that has already proven its value. The carpeting should be integrated with the security system for providing building evacuation directions that are based on the evacuation conditions and route people away from building areas they should avoid. That’s something that the required wall exit signage can’t do.
Consider that in a fire situation, smoke may be inhibiting visibility of signage and building features at eye level, while the floor remains visible and luminous carpeting messages can be seen even by someone crawling along the floor. Of course, the carpeting can also display visitor-specific welcome signage and other messaging appropriate for the day or season.
The Building Experience
One key concept for smart buildings is that the thinking of planners and designers has ventured beyond building architecture and building appearance to consider the entire building experience. Building occupants no longer just “visit” or “use” a building – they interact with it, and the building responds to their presence and, if desired, can remember their preferences from previous visits.
Smart Building Security System Integrations
Indoor locating is a key technology, and a well-designed smart building will utilize multi-technology locating for accuracy and reliability. Indoor locating underlies building way-finding systems, whereby the occupant’s or visitor’s smartphone app provides visual directions updated per the individual’s actual location. It’s typically accurate within three feet or less.
Indoor locating can also be used to extend the capabilities of a physical access control system to provide presence control, a term introduced by Ticto (ticto.com) to describe the function of their product. Ticto has a physical access control innovation that is very appropriate for the high-security areas of a headquarters facility. The Ticto system includes badge holders that are near-field communications (NFC) devices into which you place an access card to wear it. The badge holder reads the card and, via wireless communication and the Ticto system’s integration with an access control system, displays a continually changing unique color sequence on the LED color bar of badge holders who have been granted access into the area. It is a unique color sequence for each authorized area.
This dramatically improves a common access control weak point, which is the challenge-response policy often implemented for high-security areas. If an authorized individual doesn’t recognize someone in their area, policy requires them to challenge the person they don’t recognize. This is often contrary to the business culture or an individual’s cultural orientation towards being non-confrontational. Now, with the badge holder’s color bar flashing red for unauthorized individuals, or remaining unlit for tailgating individuals, it’s easy just to point to the badge and say, “Your badge is not working.” There are other convenience features of the Ticto system that contribute to an enhanced building experience.
Indoor locating can be coupled with an HR system and an indoor locating system, in an injury emergency, it’s a snap to locate the closest individual with CPR training. In such a situation, minutes can make a life-critical difference in the response time.
Visual Display Technologies
Christie (www.christiedigital.com) provides a variety of building display technologies, including video projectors, light columns built from stacked micro tile displays and flexible large LED wall displays. As this column is being written, LG is displaying its new 88-inch LED TV in the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin (http://bit.ly/8ktelevision). All types of display technologies are utilized in smart buildings to set a tone and atmosphere and to convey specific messages. These are all integration points for the building’s security systems. A smart building can have floors, walls, and ceilings that are luminous and carry messages, all of which can be used to facilitate security communications during incident response.
In an emergency response situation, indoor locating can be used to identify the closest visual display for individual responders and display appropriate incident status information for them. Even more, touch-enabled displays, as well as mobile devices, can provide command and control capabilities throughout the building.
Enhancing the Building Experience
Indoor locating can also be used by the building’s smartphone app to present a “call elevator” button when someone exits a building area into an elevator lobby. This saves the individual the trouble of having to walk over to the elevator dispatch kiosk to present a credential to get the elevator. The security system already knows the authorized person’s location and can save them the trouble. The person can also make select a floor selection from the app. Indoor locating can be used to provide way-finding directions to an individual’s parked vehicle in a multi-level parking garage.
The building’s smartphone app can provide visitor management capabilities to the building’s regular occupants, and can automatically notify visitor sponsors of visitor arrivals, and can inform visitors that their sponsor is on the way to see them or provide directions and grant access to a specific meeting location. The app can show the progress of the sponsor to the visitor, or the progress of the visitor to the meeting place. It’s visual assurance of what’s happening out of sight.
This is just a partial picture of the security system integrations that add value to a smart building’s capabilities.
Security Tech Scenario-Based Design
For any building, but especially for a smart building, there are several components to security technology design thinking:
- Building and area security
- Personal safety
- Building convenience
- An enhanced building experience
This is why it is important to have early discussions about the building experience, all the building technologies involved, and to thoroughly describe the intended building experience for building occupants, visitors, building management and the technology stakeholders. That full vision is the only sound basis for developing security technology use cases whose descriptions establish the security technology requirements. When designing the security systems and their integrations, remember to include the technology infrastructure management tools needed, such as Viakoo (Viakoo.com), to assure system uptime and high performance.
