"As the world population hit 7 billion this fall and a growing number of people flock to cities, creating smarter, more sustainable cities will be critical. The first step is to create smarter buildings, the cornerstones that will lead to smarter cities. In the United States alone, buildings account for 70 percent of all energy use and 38 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. Many experts predict that buildings will be the largest consumer of energy by 2025. Smarter buildings will be able to use resources more intelligently, which will lead to reduced costs and greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately to smarter, more efficient cities. Dave Bartlett, vice president of IBM’s Smarter Buildings Initiative, is working with IBM’s Smarter Buildings team to help organizations, enterprises and individuals worldwide listen to the enormous amounts of data our buildings are generating. By listening to this data through embedding smarter technologies into the physical assets of an organization, building owners, facility managers and other stakeholders can analyze energy use to squeeze out inefficiencies, resulting in more green, sustainable, cost-efficient buildings, neighborhoods and cities worldwide, according to IBM. There is still much to be done as technologies continue to evolve and the urgency to create more sustainable buildings grows—an urgency illustrated by today’s burgeoning smarter buildings market, which is estimated to stand at about $30 billion worldwide. As the smarter buildings market evolves over the coming year, Bartlett predicts there will be five top trends that come to fruition, with smart buildings moving toward working in unison with each other and the communities in which they reside. Bartlett’s predictions for the top five buildings trends in 2012 are included in this slide show."

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/IBMs-Top-5-Predictions-for-Smarter-Buildings-for-2012-178228/