The global smart buildings market is continuing to grow, with a new report from Zion Market Research projecting its value to increase from $7 billion in 2014 to $36 billion in 2020, growing at a compound annual rate of 30 percent.
The report considers airport, commercial, hospitality, industrial, institutional, residential and other project types. Geographically, Europe led in smart building adoption in 2014, with Asia Pacific and North America following.
Factors driving the smart buildings market include the global trend of urbanization, government incentives to implement such systems and their ability to reduce energy consumption. Continued barriers include the relatively high cost of implementation and concerns about managing cybersecurity, as connecting a building’s systems to the internet makes the structure and its occupants vulnerable to a new host of threats.
