What is an intelligent building? Analysis of recent interpretations from an international perspective

In recent years, the notion of intelligent buildings (IBs) has become increasingly popular due to their potentials for deploying design initiatives and emerging technologies towards maximized occupants’ comfort and well-being with sustainable design. However, various definitions, interpretations, and implications regarding the essence of IBs exist. Various key performance indicators of IBs have been proposed in different contexts. This study explores the notion of IBs and presents an analysis of their main constituents. Through a comparison of these constituents in different contexts, this study aims to extract the common features of IBs leading to an evolved definition which could be useful as a reference framework for design, evaluation, and development of future IBs. Findings also scrutinize the long run benefits of IBs, while demonstrating the constraints and challenges of the current international interpretations

Latin America and the AIIB: interests and viewpoints

This essay gives insight into the interaction of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The AIIB has expressed a clear interest in LAC, accepting eight countries as ‘prospective’ members pending paying‐in their capital, but LAC shows almost no stamina. It is the world's only region lacking even one paid‐in member. So long as Beijing backs the request, prospective membership only requires writing a few letters. But LAC's inertia in officially joining, by passing legislation and making their capital contribution, is puzzling, given the benefits that lie untapped. The likeliest cause is their own culture of sheer negligent short‐sightedness (‘let's do it mañana’). This tendency to adjourn the acid test of action could be mitigated if countries in the region adopt long‐term non‐partisan National Development Plans to strengthen their institutional policy‐making capacity. For their part, the AIIB's Governors and Beijing, despite their initial keen interest in LAC, have had to give up nudging and adapt themselves to the Latin Americans’ labile perception of time in order to conserve their public image. They must remind LAC that only paid‐in members receive financial benefits

Construction, application and validation of selection evaluation model (SEM) for intelligent HVAC control system

Design teams are confronted with the quandary of choosing apposite building control systems to suit the needs of particular intelligent building projects, due to the availability of innumerable ‘intelligent’ building products and a dearth of inclusive evaluation tools. This paper is organised to develop a model for facilitating the selection evaluation for intelligent HVAC control systems for commercial intelligent buildings. To achieve these objectives, systematic research activities have been conducted to first develop, test and refine the general conceptual model using consecutive surveys; then, to convert the developed conceptual framework into a practical model; and, finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of the model by means of expert validation. The results of the surveys are that ‘total energy use’ is perceived as the top selection criterion, followed by the‘system reliability and stability’, ‘operating and maintenance costs’, and ‘control of indoor humidity and temperature’. This research not only presents a systematic and structured approach to evaluate candidate intelligent HVAC control system against the critical selection criteria (CSC), but it also suggests a benchmark for the selection of one control system candidate against another

Getting the territory right: infrastructure-led development and the re-emergence of spatial planning strategies

This paper argues that infrastructure-led development constitutes an emergent international development regime whose imperative is to ‘get the territory right’. Spatial planning strategies from the post-war era are increasingly employed in contemporary attempts to integrate territory with global networks of production and trade. Large-scale infrastructure projects link resource frontiers and subnational urban systems – oftentimes across national borders – in ways that constitute spatially articulated value chains geared toward the extraction of resources, logistical integration and industrial production. The paper charts the emergence of this regime, analyses its spatial manifestations and evaluates its developmental outcomes