IoT in Building & Real Estate - Occupancy Monitoring.

Efficient space allocation and usage is a real challenge for facilities managers to face increasing and evolving user demands, especially when confronted with new way of working. They have to cope with companies’ evolution and tenants’ expectations like supporting enterprise departments consolidation or reorganization, meeting needs for more or less space due to growth, mergers or lay-offs and abiding by leasing agreements conditions. Building managers and facilities managers are constantly under pressure to maximize space utilization so as to ensure maximum productivity, minimum costs and optimized working conditions for workers. Usual methods like paper schedules on the door, visual check or occupancy estimates – when not a simple guess (let’s try!) – are, at the end, counterproductive since they generate approximations, double-booking, waste of time, waste of productivity and finally users’ frustration. Efficient resource allocation and planning can benefit from real-time offices, desks, meeting rooms, open spaces and coffee break areas dynamic occupancy monitoring to track usage and attendance. Occupancy management can also help to improve tenants’ and workers’ working comfort by monitoring people presence, space occupancy density and the number of people in each area to adapt ambient working conditions. Occupancy management can also be fully integrated in Building Management Systems (BMS), Building Automation Systems (BAS) and meeting rooms booking tools. It offers facilities managers a consolidated vision of building spaces occupancy and availability, at any time, as well as statistics on usage patterns and peaks hours to adapt their services. Covid-19 pandemic made businesses and administrations realize that people are they greatest but also most vulnerable asset and space occupancy management can be a powerful tool to protect them by enabling healthy, secure and comfortable working environment to ensure serenity and, thus, productivity.

Occupancy IoT sensors and devices can help detect presence and collect information about space utilization. Space occupancy detection can be achieved by various means like IoT devices equipped with motion detection technology that can detect human presence. Other discrete battery-power IoT infrared sensors are processing thermal signal in the monitored working space and detect the human body’s heat when someone enters the room. These passive IoT infrared sensors can also be used to monitor desk or office occupancy. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) battery-powered IoT sensors can, on their side, detect smartphone presence and help to identify that somebody is in the room, assuming that your smartphone does not leave your pocket. And ultrasonic sensors can use high-frequency sound waves to scan the room and detect presence if they identify continuous disruptions of the reflected patterns they have initially registered in the empty space. All these IoT sensors and devices can be easily deployed and maintained. As they can detect presence, they can not only be used for occupancy monitoring, but they can also be a powerful tool to detect intrusions, outside working hours.

Leveraging Kerlink industrial-grade IoT connectivity, powered by LoRaWAN technology, can efficiently assist facilities managers to quickly, easily and cost-efficiently deploy, connect and manage IoT sensors for room occupancy monitoring. Having real-time information about space utilization and occupancy can help building managers to understand the precise requirements of tenants and companies so as to deliver efficient resource allocation, share space availability in real-time and optimize services based on daily usage patterns, needs and peak hours. Connecting room occupancy sensors to an industrial-grade private IoT network, with performant indoor coverage, can help to track unused spaces or to reduce overcrowded areas. Real-time room occupancy management, using LoRaWAN technology, can help reduce administration time and operating costs, improve space allocation flexibility and offer smarter booking options, while optimizing tenants and workers comfort and productivity.