By: Alexander Bernstal, Director, LTIMindtree NxT, Europe

Look around where you live and work today. Take a mental picture because in 10 to 20 years, your current surroundings will hardly resemble what we’ve come to expect for the last 100 years. Typically, buildings have been and are static in nature. We enter and exit them to live, sleep, eat, and work for the majority of our lives. But now, a dramatic shift is happening. It is propelling our buildings—and us, as humans and a collective,—forward, and we are invited for this evolutionary shift.

We’ve seen monumental progress throughout our lives—the inventions of television, air conditioning, fiber cable, washing machines, and energy efficient glass, just to name a few. But there’s much more potential on the horizon for the future. The homes and apartments where we live. The office spaces where we work. The commercial spaces where we shop.

Speeding toward Our Digital Future

We need to be primed and prepared for a digitalized society. This applies to owners of real estate, start-up companies making smart devices, and those that already provide services for existing buildings. What comes next is likely beyond what you dare to envision. But the internet of things (IoT) presents endless opportunities for the future. IoT technology fills the void between the humans in the organization and the solutions offered that deliver endless new possibilities and a greater user experience.

Millions of smart devices are currently being installed across the world to digitalize static, “analog” buildings and make them more human-centric. The key reasons are new regulatory frameworks and higher tenant expectations. Other drivers toward smart buildings and digitalization are efforts to optimize existing building operations to meet sustainability goals and accurately determine a structure’s true value. “Digital twin” is an instrumental component to enable this.

Building operations alone are currently responsible for 27% of the world’s total CO2 emissions, according to the non-profit Architecture 2030. The organization also projects that from now through 2060, the world’s total floor area will double. Now is not the time to sit back and wait. Innovative stand-alone services need to be seamlessly integrated to a multitude of other services to fully deliver the maximum potential of the smart building ecosystem. Moving into the future will require taking a big-picture approach—from both the real estate owner’s perspective and the suppliers of smart devices.

The Future Is Already Emerging

There are many exciting possibilities already taking shape around the world. For example, imagine a start-up company that provides a smart device for energy optimization sitting across the table from an established municipal energy company. These two unlikely collaborators are both looking for synergies to reduce energy consumption, decrease CO2 emissions, and enhance the living experience. Such cooperative efforts could also be a boon for a real-estate owner as reduced carbon emissions could qualify for government subsidies. Then there are instrumental integration platforms, in other words an IoT platform that can manage hundreds of thousands of devices, access control, sustainability requirements, micro-payments, and integrations internally and externally as part of the smart building ecosystem.

The challenge in this scenario is trying to simplify the scope of the endeavor. Optimally, you don’t want to buy 100 devices to measure only moisture. That will not make a big impact in the bigger scheme of things. To unlock large potential, you need to implement 10, 20, or 30 different services. There are many challenges that need to be addressed, including where to start, how to assess your organization’s readiness to educate key stakeholders, life-cycle management, and user story creation that addresses the needs of multiple personas. Organizations will also need long-term vision and the ability to adapt on the fly.

Why a Human-Centric Approach Matters

Driving technology projects simply for the sake of implementing technology isn’t the right approach for the buildings of the future. Humans are at the center of technology and technology is never stronger than the users it is there to serve. That’s why we need to have a human-centric approach. Rather than focusing on customer-centricity that has long been the norm, a human-centric approach considers the needs of all humans who are stakeholders in the buildings of the future—tenants, employees, building owners, and suppliers.

There’s no crystal ball that can show us exactly how the buildings of the future will serve humans in their lives and work environments. But we know that we will naturally view and expect our buildings to protect us, help us counteract diseases, and enhance the overall quality of our lives. Buildings will be our fortresses where we interact, immerse ourselves in experiences, and interact with fellow humans. Digitalization and IoT are at the center of this endeavor.

Get to the future faster with LTIMindtree NxT. We are passionate about how digitalization can accelerate the future-readiness of our society, one organization at a time. We leverage our IoT platforms and expertise to connect millions of devices and create valuable outcomes. Our solutions such as Asset NxT and Insight NxT leverage best-of-breed technology to collect and analyze data. Our consultant team works hand-in-hand to guide and inspire your organization to make this journey a great one.

There are many challenges that need to be addressed, including where to start, how to assess your organization’s readiness to educate key stakeholders, life-cycle management, and user story creation that addresses the needs of multiple personas.