Technical solutions and innovations are kick starting a smart building revolution; advances in lighting control, physical security, building management systems and the Internet of Things (IoT), among others. Each has created a multitude of control benefits and sensory opportunities, but that has also produced masses of unstructured data that demands a new style of data management – Big Data.

Memoori's new report entitled Big Data for Smart Buildings: Market Prospects 2015 to 2020 explores the role of Big Data within the increasing smart building adoption. Interviewing leading BAS manufacturers, technology firms, software providers, middleware companies, consultants and end users of building systems; the report identifies the improved business case for smart buildings with the addition of Big Data systems.

Big Data describes a set of complex data that is difficult to process using traditional database management tools. The processing includes capturing, storing, searching, sharing, transferring, analysing and visualisation. The fundamental advantage of current Big Data architectures is the ability to process unstructured data.

Traditional database tools required structured datasets with relationships to process the data. However, Big Data architecture such as Hadoop allows processing of unstructured data at high speed. Hadoop allows big problems to be decomposed into smaller elements so that analysis can be done quickly and cost effectively. It is a versatile, resilient, clustered approach to managing files in Big Data environment. This architecture has been a key breakthrough in smart building data management as unstructured data is ever increasing in building technology.

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Instead of relying on expensive, proprietary hardware and different systems to store and process data, Hadoop enables distributed parallel processing of huge amounts of data across inexpensive, industry-standard servers that both store and process the data, and can scale without limits. In today’s hyper- connected world where more and more data is being created every day, Hadoop’s breakthrough advantages mean that businesses and organisations can now find value in data that was recently considered useless.

By making all of your data useable, not just what’s in your databases, Hadoop lets you see relationships that were hidden before and reveal answers that have always been just out of reach. The smart building industry can now start making more decisions based on hard data instead of hunches and human bias, looking at complete data sets, not just samples.

Big Data doesn’t just help promote smart building adoption; Big Data itself also represents a huge growth opportunity within the smart building space. Memoori’s report estimates that the market for Big Data and Cloud Based Software and Services in Smart Buildings will grow from $9.17 Billion in 2015, at a rate of 33.2% CAGR to nearly $30 Billion by 2020.

Whilst the market for Big Data and Cloud Based Software and Services is still nascent, and in our 2014 report The Internet of Things in Smart Buildings 2014 to 2020 was the smallest of our three segments at only $5.2 Billion. We see growth in this area being the most pronounced; driven by falling technology costs, improved confidence in the emerging solutions and improving return on investment.

During the next 5 years, and beyond, the smart building industry is expected to scramble for Big Data solutions to their rapidly growing data processing demands. The power of Big Data will then create a data driven innovation revolution within the smart building space, constructing data relationships and revealing new statistics beyond the bounds of human imagination. No doubt reshaping our imaginations to the new possibilities created by Big Data processing. Smart building’s future is bright and data rich.