Towards collaborative data analytics for smart buildings

Smart buildings are buildings equipped with the latest technological and architectural solutions, controlled by Building Management Systems (BMS), operating in fulfillment of the typical goals of increasing occupants’ comfort and reducing buildings’ energy consumption. We witness a slow, but steadily increasing trend in the number of buildings that become smart. The increase in availability and the decrease in prices of sensors and meters, have made them almost standard elements in buildings; both in newly built and existing ones. Sensors and meters enable growing collections of data from buildings that is available for further analytics to support meeting BMS’ performance goals. For a single building to benefit from this data-based analytics, it will take a long time. Collaboration of BMS in their data analytics processes can significantly shorten this time period. This paper makes two contributions: one, a careful examination of the potential of buildings for collaborative data analytics; and two, description of models for collaborative data analytics.