The evolution of technology is taking artificial intelligence (AI) to the fore in nearly every industry. As AI gradually becomes mature, it is being applied in the energy management sector. A number of Internet of Things (IoT) companies are using AI to help businesses reduce energy consumption and expenses. U.S.-based BuildingIQ is one of these companies that aim to improve energy efficiency in large, complex building structures. BuildingIQ's Predictive Energy Optimization (PEO) service uses cloud-based software to calculate heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) related utility expenses.

Hospitals of the future will need to become more'tunable' than ever to the needs of patients and staff. BuildingIQ is already playing a role in this ongoing change by lending the machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of its 5i Platform and services to hospitals in Sydney, Australia. There are a number of reasons why BuildingIQ is the right fit for Hospitals and we explore them in detail in this Market Brief.

We all know that feeling when the solution to a problem we have invested significant time into suddenly and unexpectedly reveals itself in a wondrous "a-ha" moment. Such an epiphany can be described as an enlightening realization that allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective. Epiphanies, once deemed as insight from the divine, are relatively rare occurrences, but what if today's artificial intelligence (AI) tools can inspire and increase the frequency of epiphanies about the nature of very complex problems? BuildingIQ has set out to do exactly that --to move epiphanies out of the realm of the miraculous and into our everyday experience. We recently launched our powerful AI-driven inference engine, named Epiphany, which pulls together disparate data points within a given system; creates a virtualized network of that holistic system; and then learns how each point is connected and influenced by the other points in the network.

Steve Nguyen, VP of Product & Marketing at BuildingIQ talks about AI engines and why they are the future of intelligent buildings, and beyond. Dr. Rami Khushaba, Sr. Data Scientist at BuildingIQ talks about how his expertise in sleep apnea can be applied to buildings. Learn how we deliver value to our clients. Steve Nguyen, senior director of marketing at BuildingIQ, discusses advanced data analysis and automation capabilities, the importance of data in commercial HVAC applications, and more. Michael Nark, CEO, talks to ACHR News about our PET platform.

There are giant, complex machines out there that we all rely on. Without them, civilisation as we know it would collapse. But these machines - power stations - are often pretty dumb, according to Peter Kirk, former chief executive of software company NeuCo. "Power plants," he says, "are just robots that don't have a brain yet." That is where his firm, acquired by GE Power last year, comes in. For years, NeuCo had been developing optimisation technologies - a form of artificial intelligence or AI - that can make power plants more efficient.

In the next chapter event, we will be exploring How IoT, video data and machine learning can improve predictive models AKA'The Rise of Engineering Driven Data Analytics'. Audio, image, video, and other sensor-generated data is being combined with traditional business and transactional data to create opportunities for sophisticated analytics on more complex phenomena. Our guest speaker, Boris Savkovic, Lead Data Scientist, BuildingIQ will present on'The rise of IoT data analytics and machine learning in the smart building of tomorrow' Large-scale buildings (skyscrapers, hospitals, shopping centres etc.) account for approximately 40% of global energy consumption, with a large proportion of this energy consumed by heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) systems that regulate comfort and internal conditions/temperatures in a building. The business challenges in terms of the resulting energy costs and associated greenhouse gas emissions are substantial. However, these challenges also provide opportunities for innovative companies who can provide services and solutions that address these challenges, driving value for building owners while at the same time helping reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in a post-Paris agreement world.

Continuing our series of articles on Innovation we recently talked to Mike Zimmerman, Founder of BuildingIQ, about the approaching 3rd Step change in Building Energy Management (BEMS) technology. The 1st step change in BEMS technology was of course the move to DDC controls. Since then we have seen a 2nd wave of innovation in analytics; where companies have started to extract useful data using open protocols and analyze it to help report on performance or identify operating issues. But the limitation of this approach is that it only provides a static "point in time" view of the building. Additionally, any issues identified still require human intervention to address.

As more and more enterprises master the basics of business intelligence reporting and descriptive analytics, the real value from analytics is moving into more advanced territory, like predictive and prescriptive analytics. The problem, particularly for businesses that sell analytics-based products, is how to explain this value to customers. "In some instances, people get what we do in a flash," Boris Savkovic, lead data scientist at BuildingIQ, wrote in an email interview. "In some cases, we have a lot of educating to do." BuildingIQ, based in San Mateo, Calif., is a software-as-a-service company that helps building managers monitor and adjust facilities' heating and air conditioning to improve efficiency and reduce costs. The product is built around advanced machine learning algorithms that factor in historical energy use data, weather forecasts, data streaming off buildings' HVAC systems and energy cost data.

Analytics-driven embedded systems bring analytics to embedded applications, moving many of the functions found in cloud-based, big-data analytics to the source of data. This allows for more efficient data processing, leading to better real-time response and reduced communication overhead. I talked with Paul Pilotte, Technical Marketing Manager at MathWorks, about how the company is addressing this area, and how its tools can be used to create analytics-driven embedded systems. Wong: What are analytics-driven embedded systems and why are they important to today's design engineers? Pilotte: The ability to create analytics that process massive amounts of business and engineering data is enabling designers in many industries to develop intelligent products and services.