Discussion Forum

A forum is available for discussion on all Intelligent & Integrated Building Council topics.

Documents and Publications

The Council publishes timely publications focused on its research-driven initatives.

Middleware White Paper
The Middleware white paper was developed by a task force of CABA's Intelligent and Integrated Buildings Council to promote and orchestrate awareness of the capabilities and benefits of middleware to the commercial building industry; To enhance the relationship between key commercial building stakeholders (i.e. architects, contractors, systems integrators and owners/operators) and the community of CABA members that produce building automation middleware; and to improve the business environment for middleware solutions in the commercial building market. The paper defines middleware and describes a number of case studies where middleware has provided a solution to integrate new intelligent building technology implementations with legacy systems.

Building Control Network Protocols White Paper
Communications protocols are simply a means by which different systems may communicate. They are the message formats and procedures used to transfer information, in an understandable form, from one device, or array of devices, to another. They permit products from different vendors to communicate with each other and interact to produce intelligent integrated building systems and manage and interface with these products as if the same vendor supplied them all. This paper, prepared by CABA’s Intelligent & Integrated Buildings Council Building Protocol Task Group explores four of the most common protocols used today and compares a number of the parameters that “Assist the large building industry to understand the strengths and overall features of the building control communication protocols that are available for use in designing and implementing an “Intelligent Building”.

Best-Practices Guide for Evaluating IBT
This guide, authored by Kenneth P. Wacks, Ph.D., builds upon the Technology Roadmap for Intelligent Building Technology. This paper consists of criteria by which intelligent building technologies can be evaluated. The topics in this guide are important for various audiences, such as building owners and managers, intelligent building designers, installers.