What are Environmental Sensors?
Environmental sensors are capable of monitoring multiple air-based, heat-based and sensory changes within a space. They are a vital component in building management and smart buildings as they can monitor a variety of elements including air quality, humidity, temperature and occupancy. These sensors can transform both residential and commercial real estate beyond the traditional scope of climate control and energy efficiency. They do this by delivering real time results for efficient property management, accurate decision making and forecasting.
Benefits of Environmental Sensors
- Sustainability – occupancy and heat sensors can be used to automate systems such as the HVAC systems to reduce energy use. Particularly relevant for hospitality, education or public sector sites, where room usage can vary greatly. As well as more efficient use of energy, there is a reduction in cost. One estimate put the reduction at 30% of HVAC costs, and up to 15% of total hotel energy bills.
- Meeting Optimisation – when used in meeting rooms, occupancy and motion sensors can help direct the cameras and microphones to those who are speaking. By aiding the clarity for the rest of the meeting participants, this helps optimise decision making and meeting outcomes.
- Health and wellbeing – sensors can monitor a variety of elements including ‘invisible’ threats such as carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone and chemicals from cleaning products. This makes them vital in closed office environments such as server rooms and manufacturing floors. Within an office environment, checking the levels of pollutants helps maintain a healthy work environment and reduces illness and absence.
- Equipment – monitoring the humidity, temperature and particle pollution is especially important in environments where equipment such as racks and servers are housed. This prevents the costs associated with damage, downtime and replacement.
- Efficiency – understanding where staff or guests are located, is vital to ensure resources are used efficiently. Environmental sensors can ensure the optimal allocation of resource to the requisite areas. In office environments with a large proportion of hot desks, this ensures staff are properly catered for while avoiding waste. For hotels, the rooms which are unoccupied can have the HVAC and lighting turn off automatically.
- Forecasting – not only can environmental information be accurately measured, but the data can also be tested, recorded and stored. This is excellent for trend analysis and forecasting to optimise planning, expenditure and resource usage.
The importance of Integration
There is a vast range of environmental factors which environmental sensors can help manage. However, for full building management benefits, the sensors need to be properly integrated with the relevant Building Management solution and/or automation systems. Automation systems can be set to activate when the environmental sensors pick up a reading outside of the acceptable range. When this happens, factors such as blinds, lights and HVAC can be adjusted accordingly, without needing human intervention.
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