Current developments and challenges in building automation

The classical systems of building automation systems (BAS) have evolved from control of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC). The wide use of fieldbus technology and powerful embedded systems has enabled new developments. Building automation is employed to integrate user requirements, system requirements and optimizations in order to maintain user comfort-with energy efficiency being a recently added optimization goal. The classic three-layer automation model is transferred into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) of objects. At the same time, the complexity increases as new services are added. Object-oriented solutions are an approach to cope with this. The basic design of controllers has become distributed and is adopting advanced methods. The resulting, highly integrated systems require a defense-in-depth strategy to ensure security. We take a look at the building services today and in the near future, highlight the strength of integrated building automation over different domains and industries and show the upcoming challenges for building automation systems.