Issue of the week

摘要

With BIM we have a map of the finished building at 1:1. The facilities manager is able to move through the real building, with a smartphone or tablet, and read off what lies beneath the skin in augmented reality. The facilities manager can also do this on the desktop BIM. What is still to come is the flood of sensor input that cars have to have, feeding in the real-time use and performance data of the building. That is nearing, and when it arrives we shall have parallel Big Data technologies for cars and buildings and of course for cities too. Buildings will drive themselves better than we could, calling on their facilities managers only for any intervention required. Users will be able to expect support from the self-driving building for their use of it. As digital guru Paul Fletcher puts it: "digital systems and data can empower our decision making, if only we accept our human shortcomings."