Realcomm Features Tech Tools to Impact Bottom Line

During the conference, big data and IoT 2.0 were discussed.

SAN JOSE—The 18th annual Realcomm conference was held last week at the convention center with CRE industry pros on hand to explore the latest technology innovations impacting the industry. The Realcomm education program is designed to give building owners, developers, CIOs, CTOs, property managers, asset managers, facility managers and energy/sustainability directors the technology tools they need to positively impact the bottom line. Some of those tools include automating business processes, general technology solutions specifically for real estate organizations and smarter green intelligent building technologies. One of the sessions discussed data analytics, i.e. big data, with moderator Robert Lieberman, GPG Advisers and speakers Phil Klokis, GSA/PBS; Ted Maulucci, Tridel Corporation and Neville Teagarden, AI Capital . These types of measurements have been contemplated for more than five years, including discussions on the high cost of implementation, the proliferation of lower cost entrants to the market, the need for data scientists, etc. However, the panel discussed the current issues surrounding big data. The top questions now are who has cracked the code to extraordinary insight; do we know if our rents are too low or if they have accelerated too fast; which of our tenants will be out of business next year; are market sectors systematically downsizing; can we even predict the next downturn in our market; and what are the extraordinary opportunities for analytics insight in commercial real estate? “Big data has been used for a decade,” said Teagarden. “Big data is notably used in electronic trading and marketing analytics while the real estate industry is a later adopter.” He pointed to the four Ds of data efficiency for real estate: density to generate data, diversity of land mass, distance to transit, design of infrastructure and the destination/location of the project. For the real estate application, “we should look at cities like living organisms to predict how they will grow including traffic patterns,” Lieberman said. “We can predict the growth and decay of cities with an overlay of traffic and demographics.” There are limitations of big data sets in that they may create false positives, as Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, said earlier this year, “AI (artificial intelligence) is bad at what we would call common sense and good at recognizing patterns.” Those types of patterns were present during the last recession but the common sense aspect was lacking, Lieberman said. “The last downturn was caused by a financial confluences few saw coming,” he commented. Most major tech companies now have an Internet of Things (IoT) business group and strategy. The concept of connecting everything to the Internet including cars, buildings, apparel, sports equipment (and every other conceivable device) continues to reshape many of our traditional life and work experiences. Its impacts on the real estate industry are in the form of smart buildings and cities, but that is not where it ends. Another session during Realcomm covered IoT 2.0 and ideas such as driver tracking, building data points and other IoT ideas that will introduce both benefits and potential liabilities. The moderator was John Hampton, JLL, with speakers John Chung, Allied REIT; Sabine Lam, Google; Bobby Napiltonia, Enlighted and Rick Lisa, Intel Corporation . The statistic to open the session was 24 billion tech devices will be installed by 2020. With that number, the potential is endless. Lisa shared that technology needs to drive revenue and combining data with assets can contribute to that objective. “When you connect operation technologies to information technologies, i.e. getting data points from buildings, you can analyze the data and make revenue-generating decisions from it,” he said. “And by determining how workers/teams use a space, you can customize a space for its best use.”