SPIE joins the Smart Buildings Alliance for Smart Cities

This recently created professional association includes industrial firms, integrators, operators and turnkey suppliers in the building trade, IT and communication technologies, and energy and services who propose solutions and offerings for project owners, local authorities and companies. SBA's goal is to develop and structure smart building research, to prepare for its future and to promote it among users and customers.

The VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) communication

Smart buildings reflect SPIE's aim to merge its traditional trades with the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) communication and information system technologies in order to meet the challenges of energy efficiency and, especially, regarding the use of buildings by their occupants.

As buildings are fitted with more and more sophisticated systems to improve their energy efficiency, safety and connection facilities for their occupants, it is essential to ensure they are connected and open to the outside environment. The goal is to make those systems easier to use, to adapt them to individual user needs and to be able to control them efficiently. "On the basis of its experience and expertise in energy infrastructures, building instrumentation and control and IT services, SPIE is moving into this market as a smart building services operator. The objective is to make these systems more efficient, to expand their range of uses and to make them smarter and more reliable by integrating them into information systems," says Sébastien Meunier, head of the Régions Centre - Haute et Basse Normandie office of SPIE Communications and treasurer of SBA.

About SBA: Smart Buildings Alliance Founded in 2012, SBA provides a single centre offering smart building and eco-district solutions. It aims to organise the convergence of three fields: building automation, energy / infrastructure and IT). Focusing on solutions, it creates partnerships and promotes this business among private and public partners. Though we must move on from BMS, it remains the starting point and the key to a forward-looking approach and vision which will lead to Smart Buildings and at the time expand into Smart Cities and Smart Grids. With the assistance of technical groups of industrial trade bodies and technological associations, SBA will create stamps of approval for installations upstream and downstream of meters.

SPIE SA Pascal Omnès Communications director  Tel.: +331 34 22 58 21  e-mail: pascal.omnes@spie.com