In the Spotlight: Internet Technologies Meet HVAC Components

The purpose of oBIX is to define a standard for Web services that enables communications between a building's mechanical and electrical systems and enterprise applications, thus enabling facilities operations to be managed like any other element in today's knowledge- based businesses.

oBIX will enable communication between all building controls and a cluster of seemingly unrelated systems: environmental monitoring, financial applications, human resource systems, supply chain management and even customer relationship management (CRM) software. It promises to accelerate the evolution of HVAC from the isolated mechanical systems of the past into fully interactive nodes on “smart building” networks that also control elevators, access and security, lighting, life and safety systems, A/V equipment deployment and many other technologies, while simultaneously monitoring a building's environmental sensors, electrical panels and utility meters.

The upshot is that heating and air conditioning elements can now be designed to respond to any other source of information about a building's physical space that can be monitored or circulated via the network.

Internet technologies are poised to revolutionize the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry by enabling HVAC components to communicate not only with each other but with other building systems controls as well, and even with the enterprise business systems that have become essential to running large corporations, nonprofits and agencies.

Open Building Information eXchange (oBIX) is an industrywide initiative among building systems vendors to define standard Web services for monitoring and controlling a building's mechanical and electrical systems, including HVAC elements spread throughout a building or even throughout multiple facilities. The oBIX standard is due to be published by the end of the year, and it is sure to have a profound impact on the design of all future HVAC equipment.

The effort to develop the oBIX standard was initiated in April 2003 by the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), an industry group that promotes advanced technologies for the automation of homes and buildings in North America. Visit the Web site at www.caba.org. A year later, CABA transferred oversight of the effort to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a not-for-profit international consortium that develops e-business standards, located on the Web at www.oasis-open.org.

The purpose of oBIX is to define a standard for Web services that enables communications between a building's mechanical and electrical systems and enterprise applications, thus enabling facilities operations to be managed like any other element in today's knowledge- based businesses.

oBIX will enable communication between all building controls and a cluster of seemingly unrelated systems: environmental monitoring, financial applications, human resource systems, supply chain management and even customer relationship management (CRM) software. It promises to accelerate the evolution of HVAC from the isolated mechanical systems of the past into fully interactive nodes on “smart building” networks that also control elevators, access and security, lighting, life and safety systems, A/V equipment deployment and many other technologies, while simultaneously monitoring a building's environmental sensors, electrical panels and utility meters.

The upshot is that heating and air conditioning elements can now be designed to respond to any other source of information about a building's physical space that can be monitored or circulated via the network.