State of the Art in the Facility Management Sector.

The control and management of distributed facilities experiences a slight gap between the trend that is trying to be imposed on the market and reality. If you look at the different manufacturers and the main technology leaders, they all seem to indicate that now is the time to implement georeferenced monitoring and large data volume analysis projects. And they are right, but only in part.

In virtually all Facility Management projects, there are several needs to be resolved before obtaining all the relevant information and reporting it to the higher systems to locate them in a GIS or study them in depth. Without these points resolved, these tools will only process the data that was already obtained previously in a more visual way, but without obtaining too much additional added value.

However, it is also true that technology has also advanced enough at the level of instrumentation, control or communications to be able to tackle previously unfeasible projects. The improvements in batteries, processors and communication networks, added to the experience obtained in years of telemetry and remote control projects, have made this disruptive leap possible.

In turn, as technology has advanced, so have the requirements, either as a solution to a risk (cybersecurity is the best example, but we could also mention ultra-low consumption or high availability) or as a new functionality (OTAP, event and alarm management…)

Taking this point into account, below, we detail in a very summarized way what is the state of the art of the different levels that exist in the remote control of facilities:

• Sensor technology for demanding environments: the technological leap in information acquisition must be one of the pillars that facilitate truly knowing and understanding the state of the facility. Today, you can already find solutions powered by batteries with useful lives of years, with IP68 encapsulation or for ATEX environments and that communicate wirelessly using low-consumption protocols such as Sigfox, LORAWAN or NB-IoT. However, finding proven solutions that comply with the above is not so simple.
• Autonomous instrumentation: very similar to the previous point, there are also tools with the same functionalities and possibilities as sensor equipment, with the difference that they have the ability to make decisions and act under a logic for rapid action or autonomous plug&play equipment with minimal and affordable maintenance over time.
• Controllers for Edge Computing: unlike other sectors, in the remote control of facilities it is of interest to have the control intelligence as close to the field as possible. For this, there are already multiprotocol devices, both at the level of reporting information to the higher systems and of controlling all the subsystems of an installation to concentrate all the information (HVAC, lighting, presence, consumption, instrumentation, machines, UPSs, server rooms…) store it, contextualize it, report it and, above all, understand it to take pertinent rapid actions. These actions can be the activation or closing of other components or reporting to the teams interested in knowing that event, for example.
• Secure access: it is evident that the first step to control an installation of which there is no remote control is to access it, however, in a secure way. That is why connectivity tools are needed that are capable of working in the environment where it will be installed, that allow access to the installation through VPNs and that are easy to use, install and maintain. Without any of these characteristics, access will be unstable or even worse, insecure.
• Communications: the market is clear, any communication that is not Sifgox or LORAWAN but by IP means, must be OPC UA as the first option. However, if due to the client’s or engineering’s circumstances they feel more comfortable with telemetry protocols, DNP3 and IEC60870 are the alternatives. However, it is undeniable that with the explosion that IoT has brought, other protocols have also emerged – dozens of them -, today, two are being imposed without discussion, MQTT and REST. The use of any other communication protocol may mean that the different components of the system have interoperability problems.
• Data processing: the ultimate goal, if you want to exploit the data, is to use a platform capable of supervising, monitoring, historicizing, controlling, applying analytics and being able to capture it on a GIS. And all in real time. Not too long ago, specific software was required for each of these functions, but currently there are already platforms with the ability to perform all these functions in a standard and out-of-the-box way.

Knowing the state of the art of all these levels and knowing their advantages and disadvantages requires a continuous learning effort. Faced with the challenge of this continuous technological evolution, experience tells us that having trusted partners is a great help.

If you want to obtain more information about our experience, or the solutions that we have to respond to your problems, do not hesitate to request more information.

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