Smart Building Automation: Driving the Future of Urban Property Development

As cities continue to grow and evolve, with more people than ever wanting to live and work from within them, so to do the tactics used to house and control this city growth, without being detrimental to the quality of life or the environment.

Here are some of the ways that buildings are modernising and evolving in 2020 and beyond into the new decade, followed by some general information on the property companies involved in these sorts of developments, and then a deeper dive on home automation from a consumer level.

• Smarter build techniques – Perhaps one of the immediately noticeable differences in modern property developments is that they have new materials, strategies and techniques, allowing them to be as efficient, sleek and affordable as possible, with technology interweaved for the future.
• Automation in the “smart building” – The smart building is one that, again, is interweaved with overall technology from the beginning, that can be remotely controlled and accessed, perhaps even in tandem with multiple different apartment clusters or even buildings of the same type.

This is incredible for energy efficiency, like heating, lighting, and more can all be controlled by a remote operator, as and when required.

Property developers – RWinvest is a prime example of a knowledgeable, city-based property investment company, not only building modern city accommodation for the future, but also retrofitting existing historical architecture within cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, and repurposing it so that it has a place in the modern interconnected city of tomorrow.

Part of this comes from automation and the modern building techniques that are used in order to ensure that the structures contribute positively to a city’s economy rather than being a hindrance, but another part of it comes from the sheer tenant demand.

The Bridewell in Liverpool, for example, is a converted prison project that keeps part of the city history intact while providing students ease-of-access to the nearby academic resources.

Home automation on a consumer level

Sure, buildings and overall structures are being built with the future in mind, being able to be controlled remotely and connect to one another for the benefit of the environment etc., but what about automation in the home on a smaller scale, in terms of the day-to-day life of an individual?

The concept of the “internet of things” is something that has grown rapidly over the past few years, and the sorts of products that fall under that conceptual banner are now starting to appear in more people’s homes than you might expect.

From smart LED light bulbs to speakers, to CCTV cameras and smart heating solutions, a lot of this kit already connects to your internet in a hive mind and is much easier to navigate as a result.

In what in some ways could be described as an AI backbone to the entirety of your house, smart assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa (accessible through an app or through one of the Amazon Echo line of speaker products) or Google’s Assistant (again accessible through either an app or a Google Home speaker) can be used to connect all of these different miscellaneous electronics, even updating them on the fly and planning around the owner without user intervention required.

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