Ciao, Smart Buildings Alliance Italia

When J2 Innovations joined the Smart Buildings Alliance (SBA) in France earlier this year, it demonstrated our ambition to not only be a leader in smart building technology but support the wider industry however we can. The SBA is a think-tank created in 2012 to ‘organize the promotion of the smart buildings sector within smart cities, bringing together a group of industry players.’

After meeting with SBA president Emmanuel François, it become clear that there was a need to spread the work of the alliance beyond France, and as someone who has worked in the smart buildings industry for more than 20 years, I jumped at the chance to be involved. I had the opportunity to join digital technology veterans Cesare Massarenti and Ernesto Santini who wanted to expand and create the Smart Buildings Alliance Italia, our native country.

Months of planning has culminated in the official launch of SBA Italia on 10 December 2020; an alliance that aims to make the digital transition of buildings, cities and networks easier.
Key plans for the alliance include laying the foundations for the R2S architecture certification that supports the ‘Smart Readiness Indicator’ (SRI); an optional scheme that is outlined by the European directives (EPBD) to help raise awareness, accelerate and increase uptake of smart technologies and development of digital services in buildings.

For Italia, the alliance will be seeking to setup a commission to localize the R2S concept and appoint an Italian certification body to deliver the scheme framework. For alliance members, this means they will have the possibility to participate in defining the standard certification approach based on shared experiences, that verifies interoperability of services, transparency, and ease of use for buildings end users.

When rolled out, the R2S will be a qualitative assessment of a building's ability to adapt to the needs of occupants, efficiency, ease of maintenance, as well as ability to adapt to energy networks. R2S will therefore be a technical specification to interoperability using independent connected and communicating layers. The French schema, which is already active, identified 3 layers: infrastructure, objects and applications which can be accessed using a RESTfull API on IP.

A very similar approach will be at the foundation of the R4G commission, whose aim will be to define the architecture supporting the interaction of the building with the Smart Grids and the involved actors. Thanks to EDGE computing and to modern Open Building Operating Systems Framework, the delivery point of these information will be standardized, cyber-secure and usable by anyone authorized, as well as a development environment for further applications and services.

One way that OEMs and system integrators can ensure compliance with the S2R is with J2 Innovation’s FIN Framework. Although not the only open framework for building management systems on the market, it is certainly the most open, flexible and innovative. By bringing my skills and knowledge of technology like FIN Framework, I am excited about the future of SBA Italia and the collective impact that we can have.

With the birth of SBA Italia and with the skills and contributions of future members, the S2R ‘framework’ can be used to bring sustainability, efficiency, and improvement to all our buildings and our future.

At the same time SBA Italia, would like to increase the BIM culture in the country fastening a wider adoption by creating a commission that will easy the technology access to every building stakeholder under the “B4V, Bim 4 Value” program.

Join the online launch event of SBA Italia on 10 December 2020 by registering here or contact me if you’d like to discuss being a member.