Essay Example on Florida's Demographics

The state of Florida makes up one of the 50 states of the United States. It is located in the South-eastern part of the United States and borders the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. With the current estimate for the population of the state standing at the region of 21,299,325 million residents, the state has one of the fastest-growing populations with an estimated increase of 1.8 percent every year. The state covers an area of 65.7 square miles and is currently the eighth most densely populated state in the US. The largest city in the state is the city of Jacksonville with a population of 900,000 people comprising the elderly, the young, and the middle-aged populations. The largest county is the county of Miami Dade with more than 2 million individuals residing in the area lanes.

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With a median age of 41 years, there are slightly more females in the county than there are males and this is marked by a margin of 3 percent difference. Of the entire population, the state of Florida has 70 percent Christians, 24 percent no particular faith, whereas 6 percent are non-Christian faith-based (the State of Florida, 2019). Historically, the state of Florida was a Spanish possession until it was acquired by the United States through a treaty in the year 1821. Its boundaries were later admitted as a territory and they were later admitted as a state in the United States (the State of Florida, 2019). The majority of the residents of the area are predominantly white residents with Blacks comprising 16 percent of the population.

There have been gradual population increases in the state of Florida through the decades. However, there have also been slowdowns in terms of population growth. In case the state continues to experience the same trajectory, the population is expected to exceed the 22 million mark by the time the next official census is carried out in 2020 (the State of Florida, 2019). Population increase is primarily driven by immigration from both the northern and the southern regions of the US as immigrants keep coming in through the south and other residents come in from other states (the State of Florida, 2019). The elderly population comprises people 65 years and above and these are made by 3,926,899 people. With a projection of 32,960,000 people in the state by 2050, the elderly population is expected to rise to 6,918,297 people.

Introduction to Building Automation

A Building Automation System, otherwise abbreviated to BAS or Building Management System combines mechanical, electric, and electronic, hardware, and software meant to automate the operation of a building for ease of access and utilization. According to Pana, Hariri, & Pacheco, (2019), an improvement in home engineering and advanced technologies in architecture makes it possible for building automation aimed at meeting the needs of specific populations of individuals that use facilities like social amenities and public buildings.

At the highest level, it can be referred to as a system that collects information about the operation of a building, the status of such a building, and the factors that affect the processing of such information. Some of the benefits of such buildings include the efficient use of energy, the light impact on the environment in which such buildings are found, peace of mind, general ease of access of such facilities for people with disabilities and the elderly, increased use of the facilities, and improvement in the quality of life and the state of security in the building.

Smart Buildings

The advent of new technologies in engineering and architecture has made it possible to visualize, design and implement technologically advanced designs that would otherwise be deemed impossible in the past. According to Liu, et al., (2018) a smart building is any structure that is internally designed to use automated processes to control the operation of the building including aspects like ventilation, heating, lighting, security, air conditioning and any other system that would otherwise require a mechanical operation. Such a building is normally fitted with microchips, actuators, and sensors that function to collect intelligent information and manage such information depending on the services and functions of the business.

According to Eddin et al., (2019) smart automated building infrastructures are used to assist managers of facilities, owners of the facilities and the general public to ameliorate asset performance and reliability. Such improvement improves the use of energy, optimizes the use of space and reduces the impact the building has on the environment in which it stands. Buildings are not normally connected but rather the same buildings that they were years ago only that they are now automated to provide essentials like shelter and temperature controls as well as the safety of the people inside it with the same level of efficiency for years. However, newer building or older structures are normally converted to smart buildings and these concepts are constantly changing. Smart buildings can, therefore, be explained as living organisms connected to a network with adaptable and intelligent software.

Intelligent Buildings

An intelligent building is one that incorporates the use of essential processes and technologies to create a more productive and safer environment for its occupants as well as more operationally efficient for the owners. Depending on the target population, buildings can be modeled accordingly to measure up to the owner's expectations and to meet the requirements of the population. For instance, the target population in this particular case is the elderly aged above 65 years. Such a population requires special mechanical assistance when accessing buildings as their motor skills and capabilities are naturally diminishing because of age. Intelligent buildings are designed for the sake of the future of the building industry.

Most modern residential and public buildings are normally designed with the intention of decreasing the expenses incurred by way of reducing the rate of consumption of energy (Liu, et al., 2018). The development of this field requires the use of sustainable approaches to design and strategies of energy preservation. However, many definitions of intelligent buildings are normally vague and seldom mirror the parameters (Eddin et al., 2019). A comprehensive framework that contains the convoluted criteria is essential for decision making due to the lack of practical context that normal includes all the factors that regard the design of such systems.

Recommendations for Phase I Implementation

According to Wang, (2009), building owners starting out with smart building technologies should start small to make it easier to roll out the entire process of automation. Commercial buildings and residential units in the state of Florida require smart options for the elderly population because, with a projected increase in the population in the next couple of years, it is going to be difficult for people above the age of 65 to cope with the technologies and the buildings in the state. Owners can begin by equipping one large auditorium or conference room for the activation of lights or a garage can be fitted with sensors enabling occupants to reserve and identify space.

The system of building automation is intended to keep the building safe, comfortable and healthy for the occupants and at the same time such automation is intended to minimize the use of energy while extending the life of the building. The process of collecting information, processing it and that of decision-making is normally distributed among various devices that can be interconnected for the purpose of coordination. Some of the devices can be mounted or embedded or factory mounted. They can then be connected to the mechanical equipment they control whereas others are normally installed in the building.

A smart building will be fitted with controllers or devices that make decisions. These are the biological equivalents of the brain in the human body. Moreover, the buildings will be fitted with sensors that collect information and these are the biological equivalents to the sensors. Additionally, the buildings will be fitted with actuators or the devices that normally act to control the equipment and these are the biological equivalents of muscles in the human body (Pana, Hariri, & Pacheco, 2019).

Information will travel from the sensors to the controllers and then from the controllers to the actuators through either wire connections or fiber optics. Moreover, the signals can be transferred through complex network connections or radio signals (Pana et al., 2019). The institution of such communication channels equates to the nerves of the human brain.

The sensors and the actuators can at times be embedded into the controller. One example of a simple controller mechanism complete with an actuator and an embedded sensor is the bimetallic room thermostat. The thermostat works by sensing the temperature of a given room and then comparing it with the set temperature that the occupants of the room set as comfortable then it switches accordingly (Eddin et al., 2019). The thermostat switches on and off to maintain an acceptable temperature without causing unnecessary damage or wear to the equipment. Further sophistication of the thermostat would mean making it capable of keeping track of time and detecting whether the room is occupied or not before using different setpoints to sense and control the humidity of the room.

References

Eddin, H., Fatima, D., Laallam, Z., & Said, B. (2019). Intelligent context-awareness system for energy efficiency in the smart building based on ontology. Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, 21(1), 212-233. doi:10.1007/s10462-011-9283-1.

Liu, Y., Yu, N., Wang, W., Guan, X., Xu, Z., Dong, B., et al. (2018). Coordinating the operations of smart buildings in smart grids. Applied Energy, 228(1), 2510-2525.doi. 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.07.089

Pana, Z., Hariri, S., & Pacheco, J. (2019). Context-aware intrusion detection for building automation systems. Computers & Security, 85(1), 181-201.doi. 10.1016/j.cose.2019.04.011

The state of Florida. (2019). The state of Florida. Retrieved from the State of Florida: http://edr.state.fl.us/Content/population-demographics/data/Pop_Census_Day.pdf

Wang, S. (2009). Intelligent Buildings and Building Automation. New York: Routledge.