(Continued from Aug. 18, 2018)
IN A BEST case scenario, a mixed use community that uses the Integrated Area Development (IAD) approach could actually combine homes, offices, farms and factories into one collective “enterprise” that could use one and the same onsite BMS, EMS, MIS and PLCs, linked to the same cloud hosts, VMs, Big Data and IOT.
In theory, it is possible to situate homes, offices, farms and factories into mixed use communities, with the latter limited only to non-polluting light industries. For that matter, it is even possible that the crops harvested from the farms will become the raw materials of the factories. In a mixed use community, the residents could not only live where they work, they could also grow crops where they live, and process their crops where they live.
Needless to say, their farms could also produce poultry and livestock, as well as fish and crustaceans. In other words, the residents would not only be eating organic food, they will also be eating fresh and clean food.
Technically speaking, there is actually a connection between BMS, EMS, MIS, PLCs and IOT, because the combination of the first four components would create the heart of a system that would function as the nerve center that would orchestrate all the “things” that would make IOT work, and that could include all sensors, readers, scanners that would take the form of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, Quick Response (QR) codes, Near Field Communications (NFC) devices and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards.
Even with the entry of newer smartphones that are already powered with Internet Protocol (IP), it will take a long time before the older legacy phones that are powered by General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) will become obsolete, and because of that, it is expected that the newer smartphones and the older legacy phones will still co-exist as dual options for mobile integration.
Simply put, the SIM cards will still be the means for mobile devices to “talk” to the nerve centers, forming part of millions of all other devices that would make up the broader IOT universe.
Despite the fact that ICT has evolved into advanced manifestations, there are still there basic ICT components namely the hardware, the software and the servers. Generally speaking, it could be said that the “hardware” includes all the machines and peripherals that are connected to the servers, including the server rooms and all the means of connectivity.
Further down, it could be said that the “software” includes all the applications that are running within the network, except the operating systems and the database engines.
Finally, it could be said that the “servers” include the physical and machines that run the operating systems and the database engines.
No matter how big or small a mixed use community is, it would still be practical for it to have its own server rooms, with its own means of connectivity of course. Because of cloud computing, it has become possible for enterprises to use the servers of remote host locations, either as a client for data hosting services, or as a tenant for co-location services.
Considering that mixed use communities would have to use PLCs for all four ways of automation however, it could mean that they would have to use more onsite servers, in which case they may have to put up bigger server rooms even if they would also use remote data center facilities./PN
