Smart Buildings for enhanced and sustainable user comfort

Philippe Bletterie

April 25, 2025

Thanks to connected technologies and AI, smart buildings will soon be able to adapt in real-time to the needs of users.

Today, a smart building is no longer just about controlling temperature or lighting. It’s a holistic, fluid and transparent experience for the occupant, where digital comfort is integrated with physical comfort. Soon, thanks to connected technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), every aspect of the environment will adapt in real-time to the needs and preferences of users.

User Comfort: A Redefined Concept

The modern approach to comfort is based on two key components:

• Sensory well-being (light, temperature and acoustics).
• The digital experience, which must be intuitive, accessible and secure.

But this is just the foundation. Comfort now adapts in real-time to each user, their context and specific needs. This is where connected technologies, advanced infrastructure solutions and, increasingly, AI play a central role.

Technological Pillars of a Smart Building

Fluid and Secure Connectivity

A smart building is a building where everything is securely connected.

At Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise we advocate for a network architecture tailored to use cases, implementing a segmentation of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) flows by service type, to limit access to only necessary services. This also restricts the use of certain protocols and constrains the authorized bandwidth based on defined network profiles for each type of equipment, whether IT or OT.

This security approach, proven in IT environments, is essential for OT objects (such as sensors, actuators and controllers). These cannot be secured in the same way as IT terminals. Less powerful and often energy-constrained, these devices cannot run antivirus software or carry heavy security protections. In these cases, security relies on a behavioral approach: Analyzing flows, bandwidth and access requests to detect anomalies. Thus, intelligent segmentation not only improves overall resilience but also reduces potential attack surfaces.

Intelligent Communication

Intelligent communication is essential to orchestrate the user experience in a connected building. It not only informs users (through alerts, notifications and dynamic signage), but also monitors the state of equipment for real estate operators and automatically notifies maintenance providers when thresholds are exceeded or a malfunction is detected.

It creates a continuous link between IT, OT and users, with AI as the conductor for reactive and contextual management.

Three Service Levers for Enhanced Comfort

Adaptability

With sensors and contextual analysis, the environment automatically adjusts based on the presence or preferences of a user. But this adaptability goes further: It also integrates external building data such as weather conditions, pollution alerts or network maintenance operations (such as telecom or energy). The smart building thus becomes proactive, capable of anticipating disruptions to adjust its operation and preserve occupant comfort.

Visibility

Monitoring consumption, connections or anomalies allows both occupants and managers to act with full knowledge. This visibility not only serves technical supervision but is also a crucial lever for measuring the return on investment (ROI) of implemented solutions. It quantifies energy performance gains, identifies avoidable over-costs (such as unnecessary subscriptions or excessive energy consumption) and justifies investments in digital infrastructure and services.

Integrated Environmental Responsibility: Comfort Must Also Be Responsible

The smart building promotes responsible resource use while ensuring an optimal experience. This includes:

• Prioritizing natural light
• Automatically turning off or putting unused equipment into standby via PoE (Power over Ethernet – devices powered directly by network equipment) or connected outlets
• Automatically optimizing air conditioning based on occupancy or weather conditions
• Notifications or voice guides encouraging users to consume more responsibly, for example by informing them about the cost/carbon footprint impact of excessive heating or air conditioning
• Warnings in case of potentially disturbing or deafening audio levels (such as loud music in an open space or shared area)
• And, more generally, intelligent orchestration to avoid waste without imposing constraints by providing recommendations for responsible usage

Environmental responsibility is not just about limited resources, but also about intelligent management. With AI, a smart building can continuously adjust its energy usage and processes, thus offering sustainable comfort while reducing its ecological footprint.

AI at the Service of a Smarter Building

Artificial intelligence plays a central role in the operation of a smart building, enabling optimized and responsive management on multiple levels.

Predicting needs:

AI anticipates the needs of occupants and infrastructure based on weather trends, observed usage and occupancy peaks. For example, it can adjust heating or ventilation based on weather forecasts, regulate lighting or guide visitors based on traffic patterns and even scale services like catering and elevators to handle high occupancy.

Personalizing the user experience:

AI recognizes user preferences and automatically adjusts the environment, such as temperature, lighting or notifications, providing a seamless experience across different spaces in the building or on a connected campus.

Preventive security:

AI secures both IT and OT systems. In IT, it detects application failures or network saturation, while in OT, it analyzes weak signals from often non-standard and vulnerable equipment. AIOps platforms (artificial intelligence for IT operations) enable this cross-IT/OT behavioral analysis, identifying anomalies like unusual power consumption, abnormal bandwidth usage or changes in sensor states that could signal a malfunction or potential attack. This approach enhances OT cybersecurity by compensating for the lack of embedded antivirus with behavioral detection models.

Preventive and proactive maintenance:

AI goes beyond security by predicting failures before they occur. By continuously monitoring the state of equipment and detecting invisible anomalies, it enables proactive maintenance. Sophisticated sensors allow adjustments to be made remotely to prevent major breakdowns and minimize their impact on occupant comfort and safety.

Reactive emergency management:

In an emergency, AI allows for the prioritization of critical services over less urgent ones. For example, emergency communications, video surveillance and security sensors are prioritized over services like air conditioning or video streaming. This process is facilitated by the continuous exchange with the network management platform, enabling AI to make real-time prioritization decisions to ensure dynamic resource management.

Towards an Autonomous Future

In ten years, buildings will no longer simply be intelligent spaces — they will become autonomous ecosystems, capable of learning, anticipating and adapting. However, this evolution will require seamless collaboration between IT, OT and HR to reinvent living and working spaces.