How Hikvision and its partners are optimizing green-building operations with ‘digital twins’

Hikvision and its partners are using innovative ‘digital twin’ technology to optimize green buildings and minimize negative environmental impacts.

Green buildings incorporate intelligent design and environmentally friendly and high-performance materials that minimize consumption of resources and energy and reduce waste during the construction process. But as well as minimizing environmental impacts and especially carbon emissions, green buildings incorporate favorable living and working spaces and environments that improve occupant health and wellbeing, boost occupancy rates, and support increased productivity and profitability for businesses.

For all of these reasons, real-estate developers worldwide are embracing green building design principles and adhering to national or international standards for eco-friendly, energy-efficient, and healthy homes and offices. 

To help unleash the full potential of green buildings, Hikvision has created an innovative digital twin solution. This can be used to create a digital and visual ‘replica’ of a building to enable constant reporting on key performance indicators, such as energy efficiency, climate control, and security – and enabling fast, effective interventions in the event of an incident or technology outage. 

Creating a digital ‘model’ of a physical building

To empower the digital twin solution, Hikvision brings in products from multiple portfolios and collaborates with partners in range of sectors, from sensor and automation software providers, to alarm system and elevator control companies. 

Based on these collaborations, Hikvision has integrated a diverse range of AIoT technologies that help to support greener building operations. These include everything from video security systems to multi-dimensional perception systems and intelligent automation, transforming building management systems into intelligent platforms. This convergence encompasses multiple subsystems, including lighting, energy management, environmental monitoring, HVAC, and more.

Data from all of these integrated AIoT systems is fed into advanced 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) software, which allows the entire building to be visualized in the form of a ‘digital twin’. This can be used to monitor a range of building KPIs, including environmental quality, water and electricity efficiency, atmospheric conditions, personnel access, and parking details. This means that building operator can understand the building’s status at all times, identify any incidents or problems, and react faster to fix them. 

Working greener and smarter with the digital twins

Integration of AIoT applications with the virtual platform enables efficient data analysis, proactive risk management, visualized emergency responses, post-action evaluations, and better-informed decision-making. These advancements improve every aspect of building management – helping to increase efficiency, environmental performance, and resource utilization. 

• Real-time data on energy consumption
  With the digital twins, building operators can quickly spot energy consumption trends and abnormal utilization of water, electricity, lighting, air conditioning, and gas. For example, users can use Augmented Reality (AR) cameras to see where lights have been left on in empty rooms and turn them off to save energy.
• Improved utilization of space and facilities
  Operators can view heat maps in the digital twin to understand peak times and occupancy rates for key areas of the site or building, including parking lots, meeting rooms or waiting rooms. With AIoT devices observing the flow of people and vehicles, lighting and HVAC systems can be turned off in areas that are not being used to save energy. 
• Enhanced user experiences
  Multi-dimensional data from the digital twin, including temperature, humidity, and air quality, improves occupants’ awareness of their environment. Air monitoring sensors detect overall air quality, smoking, vaping, carbon monoxide, and other hazardous gases. Automatic alarms for water leaks, smoking, and trash overflow enable quick, effective responses that improve user experiences and reduce health risks. 
• Improved fire safety
  Hikvision solutions are integrated with third-party fire alarm systems, providing visual alerts in the event of a fire risk and supporting faster, more effective safety responses. Other features also help to protect building users, including automatic door opening, highlighting of evacuation paths, and real-time two-way audio broadcasts to inform users and help them exit the building as quickly as possible.
• An end to paper waste
  Hikvision, along with partners specializing in access control, elevator control, and time and attendance systems, help customers implement a paperless approach for building management. This means that processes such as visitor exit/entrance, elevator management, and employee attendance can be managed with no need for paper forms or records. 
• Greater energy efficiency based on remote building management 
  Hikvision platform integrates seamlessly with the Building Management System (BMS), enabling operational staff to manage the building remotely in a fully centralized way. Digital signage, air conditioning, and LED lighting can be controlled remotely, for example, reducing workloads, improving efficiency, and saving energy.

Based on open solutions and partner collaboration, Hikvision is committed to helping customers build ecological, energy-saving, waste-reducing, and healthy buildings that comply with green building certification programs such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design). In one prominent example, our solution helped Asian Games 2023 to optimize energy efficiency at three venues in Hangzhou, China. 

Hikvision’s green building solution shows the company’s commitment to leading ESG practices. We continue to collaborate with partners to create new solutions that support long-term sustainability.