This research takes an in-depth look at predictive maintenance and AI in intelligent buildings. Using stakeholder surveys, expert interviews, and detailed market analysis, this project set out to understand how use cases, customer environments, buying behaviors, and ecosystem interactions all impact and influence the development of these technologies.
OVERVIEW OF AI AND PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE IN BUILDINGS
The wave of applications that will leverage AI and machine learning (ML) to automate basic tasks will disrupt every industry imaginable. Intelligent buildings are no exception, bringing forward key use cases in the areas of maintenance, energy management, financial analytics, and experience orchestration.
Predictive maintenance relies on reactive analytics, as well as multi-regression analysis and convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Regression analysis is a form of supervised ML that predicts the effect that one variable has on another based on how the two variables correlate. CNNs also depend on supervised ML, but are specifically designed for image recognition. Predictive maintenance can be characterized as a suite of software and platforms tools that leverage data from control and automation systems, distributed sensor networks, and external business intelligence to provide signal from noise estimates of when a system is expected to break down. The growing demand for greater visibility and control around system and machine health, in conjunction with the increasing availability of emerging technologies, has led to a consistent cycle of innovation and progress around predictive maintenance. This approach effectively identifies the likely issue and estimates the system’s life expectancy given the occurrence of that issue.
Most applications of AI for predictive maintenance in buildings are aimed at reducing labor costs, downtime, and the overall duration of the maintenance process. This is largely achieved by predicting a potential system failure and dispatching technicians before that failure occurs. Doing so will likely translate to fewer hours spent diagnosing the issue, and fewer dollars spent replacing machinery that could have otherwise been fixed.