Developing a Scoring System to Evaluate the Level of Smartness in Commercial Buildings: A Case of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Smart buildings (SBs) are developed in many different ways and are self-proclaimed smart. There are a great number of publications introducing smart systems using a wider range of tools and sensors. However, the level of smartness, functions of the smart system, and the usefulness of the system are not the same, which may give a wrong impression to clients or potential buyers of a building. Developing a scoring system that enables determining the overall smartness of a building is necessary. Despite the necessity, there is a dearth of studies in this area. Hence, the purpose of this study is to develop a scoring system to evaluate the level of smartness of Sri Lankan commercial buildings. Thus, initially, smart criteria were identified, defined, and categorized through a literature survey. Subsequently, 35 experts in the commercial building sector were interviewed. Finally, the relative importance of the smart criteria was derived through the AHP technique, and accordingly, a scoring system was developed. The study identified six main criteria to evaluate the smartness of buildings in the scoring system. The automation criterion with the highest relative weight was concluded to be the dominant criterion (45.59%) in the scoring system. Communication and data sharing were placed at second with a relative weight of 18.76% and indicates the importance given by the study findings in establishing the backbones of SBs. Occupants’ comfort, energy management, occupants’ health and safety, and sustainability criterion were ranked third, fourth, fifth, and sixth within the scoring system. This study is one of the first to investigate in detail the contribution of both soft and hard services of a facility in determining the overall smartness of a building. Property developers in the commercial building sector can benefit from this study by recognizing the necessary criteria to be embedded in their SB development projects in order to attract more tenants and customers.

Adopting Smart Building Concept in Historical Building: Case of Abu Jaber Museum, Jordan

“…According to one of the definitions (Al-Omari, 2007; Brusaporci and Maiezza, 2021), a smart building is any structure that uses automated processes to automatically control the building's operations, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, security, and other systems. This definition is close to another one (Gunatilaka et al, 2021;Khoshelham, 2018): a smart building is a building, which is equipped with fully automated building service control systems. According to Omar (2018), a smart building is a building that has the ability to learn and take into account its users' interactions with the space.…”

Interval Valued Pythagorean Fuzzy AHP Integrated Model in a Smartness Assessment Framework of Buildings

“…Understanding the characteristics and specific criteria that comprise smart buildings is quite challenging, given the development of new technologies and is, therefore, the subject of much research [36][37][38][39][40]. A literature review is carried out to select criteria and sub-criteria for determining the smart buildings indicators more systematically at the beginning of the research.…”

“…A literature review is carried out to select criteria and sub-criteria for determining the smart buildings indicators more systematically at the beginning of the research. Indicators have been divided into six main groups, as suggested by Gunatilaka et al [36]. Existing tools for evaluating buildings have focused mainly on environmental aspects [41], so the applicability of such a criterion in determining the building's smartness level is questioned.…”

“…Green buildings construction [36][37][38]41,[43][44][45][46][47][48] Criterion applies to green and ecologically friendly processes in different aspects of building, from urban planning to material selection. Guidelines for creating sub-criteria are land management, bioclimatic design, use of ecological materials, and Renewable Energy Systems (RES), including waste management.…”

“…The use of Interval methods facilitates the work of experts in the sense of facile determination in the classification of the performed grades, as was performed in existing research [36,37]. It is easier for an expert to choose an interval membership (non-membership) than a corresponding crisp value.…”