The Next Frontier: Health and Wellness for Building Occupants
May 10, 2021
Part 4 of 4 in our series on the ways that smart building technology creates sustainable environments.
Building occupants desire more than just an office space; they want to work in an environment that supports their health, happiness and general well-being. And that’s exactly where smart building technology comes into play – to create healthy and sustainable environments for occupants while also improving employee wellness.
Getting in Sync with Our Minds and Bodies
Healthy office buildings boost productivity and provide a purpose beyond their usual workspace functionality.
With solutions such as circadian rhythm and bio-centric lighting, occupants have numerous lighting options that contribute to their productivity and provide a comfortable, personalized space. Circadian rhythm lighting mimics the lighting patterns of the sun, creating the appearance of natural light to support our bodies natural systems. Plus, tunable white lighting can be integrated with smart building platforms to automatically adjust the color temperature of lighting during the day, replicating the effects of natural light.
This solution can also make use of daylight-harvesting features to accurately balance the artificial lighting levels with the amount of natural light entering the rooms. These lighting outcomes provide a natural lighting solution for improving wellbeing of building occupants, which also help buildings meet WELL building standard requirements.
Bringing It all Together with IoT
Smart lighting alone has great benefits for occupants, but a smart building IoT-enabled automation platform can combine multiple building systems such as HVAC, security and building sensors onto one network to provide even greater benefits. In doing so, occupants now have the ability to customize their workspaces to create an environment that best fits their needs and optimizes their productivity.
Furthermore, with a variety of sensors each having the ability to connect under one IoT platform, building management can easily track levels of air quality and CO2 using sensors. Studies have shown that using CO2 sensors helps to improve occupancy productivity by closely monitoring air quality and allowing the building’s air to be altered as a result of detecting higher CO2 levels. And with improved air quality and less CO2 present in the air, building occupants can work at a better capacity and contribute effectively to operations.
Safety is also a key concern of many building occupants. This has left owners searching for a solution to keep spaces clean and provide peace of mind for employees, and UVC light disinfection solves this problem for building owners with innovation and accuracy.
During flu season or pandemics, intelligent disinfection is an effective solution that uses UVC lighting to disinfect spaces and remove pathogens both on surfaces and in the air. The system has safety measures in place to ensure spaces are unoccupied before the disinfection cycle begins, including sensors and occupancy scans. Once a space is determined to be empty, the cycle begins, doors lock and a purple light illuminates to alert everyone that UVC lights are in use. Once the process is complete, the doors will unlock and the space will be clean.
Studies have shown how UVC lighting technology is extremely effective in killing pathogens and making spaces safer for occupants. By providing a clean and comfortable environment through smart building technology for building occupants, they can focus on the tasks at hand and be confident in the security and safety of their space.
With the numerous opportunities available to create sustainable environments with PoE and IoT smart building technology,
selecting the right group of partners to achieve green-building goals is essential. And by using Igor as an IoT provider, Superior Essex cabling and Legrand connectivity, companies can achieve their goals with reputable, sustainable partners who have created product lines which support a future that minimizes impacts to the environment and provides positive outcomes for building occupants.