FIAP: Facility information access protocol for data-centric building automation systems

Intelligent buildings are getting data-centric - they archive the historical records of motion detectors, power usages, HVAC statuses, weather, and any other information in order to improve their control strategies. The engineering cost of installation and maintenance of such systems should be minimized as the system owner has to operate them for several decades: i.e., the lifetime of the building. However, there are several design pitfalls that multiply such engineering costs, which make the operation heavy burden. This paper identifies those pitfalls and presents technical challenges that enable lightweight installation and maintenance. We, then, design facility information access protocol (FIAP) for data-centric building automation systems. We carried out FIAP-based system integration into a building of the University of Tokyo, and demonstrate that FIAP enables incremental installation for wide varieties of applications with small engineering costs.