BM (NYSE: IBM) has unveiled its most comprehensive smarter buildings solution as it highlights three unique projects in New Orleans, New York and Minnesota that show the potential of applying advanced analytics and automation for office buildings.

With an estimated one million people around the world moving into cities each week, new urban growth is driving demand for buildings and energy use. Buildings consume a third of the world's energy, according to recent reports and up to 50 percent of energy and water in buildings are often wasted. In fact, by 2025, buildings worldwide will become the largest consumer of global energy -- more than transportation and the industrial sectors combined.

IDC Energy Insights estimates that the global Smart Building market was $3.1 billion for 2010 and is expected to grow to $10.2 billion by 2015.

Reducing energy cost has become a priority for cities, universities, corporations, hospitals and factories. Now, thanks to the deployment of sensors and building control systems from Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric and others over the last decade, organizations have access to a constant flow of data on lighting, heating, air conditioning, manufacturing and computer usage that can easily generate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of data points to be reviewed and acted upon.

IBM today is launching its Intelligent Building Management software that applies IBM's advanced analytics and automation software to make sense of buildings' data. With the most comprehensive view of energy and facility operations, the software provides insights into the real-time operations of buildings and flags potential maintenance issues to improve equipment management and reliability.

"Organizations are struggling to find ways to reduce their buildings' energy use," said David Bartlett, vice president, IBM Smarter Buildings. "IBM sees a tremendous opportunity to help organizations listen to and make sense of a building's operations by applying a real-time, analytic approach."

At IBM's Smarter Buildings Forum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York today, IBM is spotlighting three new projects that show the potential of this emerging smarter buildings innovation. These include Tulane University's School of Architecture, IBM's campus in Minnesota and IBM Research project with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. For details on the museum news, visit: http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34696.wss

Smarter Rebuilding in New Orleans

Tulane University's School of Architecture, a program distinguished by its focus on community engagement and environmental sustainability, has turned to IBM Intelligent Building Management and Johnson Controls to advance its own smarter buildings evolution in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction six years ago. As the largest private employer in the City of New Orleans, Tulane University has made significant advances in rebuilding in more environmentally sustainable ways both the community at large and its campus, which alone suffered more than $650 million in damages and losses.

The first IBM project is helping to transform the home of Tulane's School of Architecture, the century-old Richardson Memorial Hall, into a "smarter building living laboratory," using IBM Intelligent Building Management while maintaining respect for its historic status. The school aims to arm a new generation of architects with techniques that will allow historic buildings to be more efficiently adapted for modern use.

Like many century-old buildings, Richardson Memorial Hall's heating, cooling, wiring and water equipment had been installed eight, 20 and even 40 years ago-when the energy requirements were only a fraction of today's computer- and cooling-intensive environment. The IBM project will bring together building technology for heating, cooling, lighting and water to act in a more holistic fashion for better results. The building will have intelligence to monitor itself and communicate how it should be most efficiently operated, significantly reducing the natural resources it currently uses.

"The work with IBM will help us advance the vision of the school - a vision that considers sustainability as a fundamental ethic guiding our evolution and setting the stage for progress for years to come," said Kenneth Schwartz, Dean of the School of Architecture, Tulane University. "We are particularly inspired by the melding of environmental sustainability and technology innovation as we embark in a new era of smarter buildings."

The architecture students will get a first-hand opportunity to experiment on how air temperature, humidity, water temperature and other parameters affect the quality of comfort in the rooms as they aim to minimize the consumption of natural resources. Along with IBM, they'll work in a cross-discipline team of facilities management, IT staff and partners such as Johnson Controls to create best practices that can be applied across campus and nationally.

The New IBM Intelligent Building Management Software

An industry first, IBM Intelligent Building Management provides real-time energy management and performance optimization through end-to-end visibility. It provides insight to asset performance, automates service requests and notifies for critical events, while maintaining a role-based, secure solution. IBM estimates that smarter buildings can reduce energy usage up to 40 percent in some cases and reduce buildings' maintenance costs by 10 to 30 percent.

It works by collecting real-time data and events from sensors on boilers, air ducts, lights, water pipes, chillers, computer rooms, and external temperature monitors, as well as from a building's management system. The data is analyzed and the results are fed into its dashboard to let an operator drill into details such a building's microclimates and the functionality of specific boilers and also scale out to see enterprise-wide metrics.

IBM offers a set of analytical rules to detect anomalies in a building's functionality based on energy and operations, such as if the energy profile of an air-handling unit is deviating from normal trends. Analytics can provide valuable insight, for example:

Flagging outlying behavior such as the concurrent use of heating and air conditioning, or the use of heat when the external temperature was over a preset threshold;

Pinpointing potential mechanical malfunctions causing inefficiencies in equipment, such as an air-handling unit working overtime, which upon examination revealed a defective fan that needed to be replaced; and

Providing metrics of a site's overall energy use to test and benchmark the efficiency of energy-saving techniques.

The software helps building operators better pinpoint costly repairs, prioritize and then automate work-orders for maintenance staff. For example, when performance data indicates that a part needs to be replaced in a heating unit, an alert is generated, the operator can review it and place a work order, which automatically identifies the make, model number and history such as the last time it was replaced.

Through the work order, the maintenance team can send a qualified mechanic armed with the right replacement part to attend to the issue before it impacts overall service. This helps organization evolve from scheduled maintenance to "just-in-time" predictive maintenance based on real-time performance. The analytics help the team better understand which parts are the most reliable and what vendors to choose.