HOW IoT CONNECTED LIGHTING COULD TRANSFORM COVID SAFETY IN BUILDINGS Lydell Stokes, National Manager – Future Markets, Pierlite
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he COVID-19 pandemic has driven a paradigm shift in how we as a nation understand public safety. In the past couple of years since the pandemic emerged, we have seen schools, offices, shopping centres and restaurants repeatedly closed due to transmission risks. Prior to 2020, these were environments previously considered ‘safe’ by regulators and occupants. Today, safety has a new meaning. We are now approaching a promising breakthrough on the road to reopening, with (at the time of writing) 94.4% of Australians aged 16 and over fully vaccinated. While the prospect of reopening is good news for asset managers and businesses, it does not mean a return to the old ways. Even with a vaccinated population, it is evident COVID-19 is here to stay. To remain open, offices, schools, shopping centres and entertainment venues will need to prepare to operate with COVID, placing new safety procedures at the forefront of operations. To achieve this, asset managers today are already implementing a new class of interconnected technologies set to revolutionise COVID safety, reduce transmission risk and assist with contact tracing.
12 ECD [ELECTRICAL+COMMS+DATA] - MARCH 2022
Characterised by cloud technology, sensors, controls and analytics, connected ecosystems remain one of the fastest growing technology segments for built assets, forecasted to grow to $21 billion by 2023 as found by Omdia. This article will discuss how asset managers across Australia and New Zealand are preparing to utilise the capabilities of IoT connected ecosystems to support COVID safety.
Creating building occupancy heatmaps With a new focus on COVID-19 safety, it is critical for asset managers to have a clear understanding of how building occupants, such as office staff or retail customers, move through rooms and spaces. It also makes sense for facility managers to know how densely populated rooms are in real time and receive alerts if there are breaches to density limits. By equipping rooms with state-of-the-art sensors serving live and historical data to cloud dashboards, asset managers can create occupancy heatmaps that show both foot traffic movement and the density of each room in real time. This enables asset managers
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