Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for Smart Cities. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising Smart Building solutions.
For our 5 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 274 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
Throughout the construction of a new building, it is vital to consider its possible interactions with the environment. As widespread glass building envelopes appear to be quite energy-consuming, new smart facades with their embedded sensing and condition regulation act in the form of a self-sustained smart infrastructure able to manage the comfort of its inhabitants. PHYSEE a startup from the Netherlands, produces SmartSkin, a solution that transforms buildings into sustainable ecosystems with the use of solar power. It aspires to lower energy consumption, increases convenience and generates electricity for houses by incorporating solar cells and weather sensors into facades as well as using its plug-and-play SmartWindows product. The latter applies a patented nanogrid technology to convert sun into sustainable electricity, optimize climate control and communicate user settings.
Smart floor sensors, and analytics, placed in smart buildings, extract useful insights from people’s walking patterns. In particular, they help to predict attendance of various places in smart cities (incl. retail, medical, industrial or residential uses), identify regularities and get real-time updates. US-based Scanalytics aims at establishing intelligent environments by utilizing low-energy daisy-chained smart mats, both indoors and outdoors. This kind of smart flooring captures favored routes over chosen locations, indicates key areas and collects data (occupancy, abandonment and conversion rates, waiting time, traffic flow, etc.). Besides, these smart mats provide relevant heatmaps and analytics, primarily in consumer services.
Сonstant compromising between energy bills and air exchange in modern buildings induce the need for employing smart ventilation systems, capable of simultaneously reducing the house’s heat/cool demand, and maintaining a decent level of indoor air quality for both airtight and draughty homes.
