As our buildings and the lifts installed in them age, risks related to structural instability of the building and lift failure increase. 45% of Europe’s buildings are 50+ years-old and 70% of Europe’s lifts are 20+ years-old. Every year, lift downtime adds up to 190 million hours worldwide, and ~1.000 lift user accidents occur in Europe. Recent examples of building collapse caused by extreme hydrogeological events, mostly earthquakes, have notably risen concern on structural safety in highly seismic countries such as Italy and Greece.
e BlueBox offers an innovative solution to this challenge based on the IoT by enabling continuous, remote monitoring of lift and structural performance and signalling anomalies. By installing sensors in the lift and lift’s shaft and automatically filtering and analysing the data they collect through advanced algorithms and cloud-based cognitive computing, we are able to anticipate and notify potential failures and suggest preventive actions.
This solution fulfils unmet market needs: for lift monitoring, there are some proprietary, partial solutions (not valid for all types of lifts and based only on data provided by the lift’s control unit), and lift maintenance is still mostly based on on-site visits; for structural monitoring, current solutions are complex, costly and installed only temporarily on the suspicion of a problem. e BlueBox provides a cost-effective, easy-to-install, all-types-of-lift compatible access to continuous, reliable monitoring to improve building safety and reduce lift maintenance costs.
IoTty has already built a functioning prototype of e BlueBox and is working to improve the product to successfully reach the market in the next years. Specific objectives of the project include:
- Develop improved version of our standard, modulable data collection equipment and configuration valid for all types of lifts.
- Refine and develop new algorithms for reliably detecting anomalies and anticipating threats.
- Improve usability in the access to our monitoring service through further development of multi-device compatible, customizable dashboard and alert notification.
Once e BlueBox enters the market, it will contribute to improve safety in buildings by mitigating the risk for building collapse and lift accidents, preserve capital stock and architectural heritage, improve efficiency and effectiveness of lifts maintenance, and generate jobs and added value in the thriving, growing lift modernisation market.
