Integrating Building Automation Technologies with Smart Cities An Assessment Study of past, Current and Future Interroperable Technologies

Future smart cities would integrate a wide range of mostly heterogeneous systems and ICT is an essential asset in the coordination of those. The smart buildings, a major smart cities research and development domain, should advance beyond the complex automation tools and the anticipated energy and comfort envelope. The universal convergence to technologies that would enable the seamless integration with the anticipated smart cities urban environment should be highlighted. Although it is a concept widely accepted for current and future developing standards, it is much less communicated across scientific fields as for example the urban development and building automation. Even worse its necessity, in the latter, is frequently challenged. This paper firstly will try to address the market and scientific criticism towards a fully web-services enabled building in a fair and transparent approach. Secondly it proposes a system as an interoperability layer able to build advanced managements schemes by integrating the assets of current automation and monitoring systems to the Internet backbone.