How Can Your Building Benefit from Sensors?
You’ve heard the adage, “A building is only as strong as its foundation.” Modernly-designed constructions are established with more than concrete and slabs. Through technological innovation, architects and engineers alike are improving the efficiency, comfort, and longevity of the infrastructure we use to navigate our lives. From the Post Office to the office park, low-impact devices known as sensors detect various conditions within and outside of the structure’s four walls. The data from these sensors helps facility managers monitor and make decisions regarding the safety of all occupants.
Perimeter Safety Monitoring
For private headquarters or even nuclear power plants, strategic sensor placement is beneficial to the integrity and security of a firm’s assets. Security professionals use the term Perimeter Intruder Detection System (PIDS) to encompass the array of technologies that warn of exterior intrusion in advance of an interior breach. Typically, a combination of clever instruments mounts the ideal defense against malicious infiltrators. For instance, an amphibious military base on the coast would require more protection than motion sensors, what with the water in constant play. Instead, a few electrostatic fields as well as thermographic cameras may be employed to detect objects approaching at a certain speed and body temperature.
Snow Load Monitoring
One keen application of sensors is now available for the purpose of structural monitoring building. In the event of extended snowy weather, a system summarizes recorded data from specially-designed sensors and complex programming to inform management of the current pressure of the rooftop. This concept, known as snow load monitoring, is unique in that it uses a physical science algorithm to understand and predict the current burden placed on the walls, beams, and trusses that connect to a facility’s roof. For building projects that are complete, snow load monitoring is even available for retrofitting.
As a project or construction manager, the impact of sensors is evident. The building’s tenants may, in fact, stay longer in a location given the auxiliary protection of sensor-related intel. Such a large outcome is made possible from these minuscule implements.