Shopping malls normally have different sales, parking and outdoor areas that should be integrated into a building automation system. According to the areas, different requirements are given. For parking areas, especially the lighting is of great importance. To save energy, presence detectors can be used that only react if a person is in the relevant area. For the security of parking cars and car owners, cameras are very likely to be installed.
In the shopping ares, especially lighting and the room climate is of great importance.The customer should feel good and be attempted to buy. According to temperature outside, number of people in the shop, lighting and waste heat, a defined target value has to be reached. Sensors in the rooms check the actual temperature and pass the values on to the main server, so the desired actions can be taken manually or automatically. By using a hysteresis, constant switching on and off can be avoided as the devices only react again when a predefined value is falling under the limit.
Kind and intensity of lighting depends on the individual concept of the shop and the supply of daylight. According to those conditions, more or less artificial light is required. Also, the use of colored lights varies from shop to shop, e.g. more red light in meat markets.
Building automation systems are not only applied in shopping malls but as well in individual shops. Often, a centralized control out of the headquarters is required for subsidiaries - the so named "Clustering". Each subsidiary has an own server, acting as a sub server. These servers are connected with the main server via a Wide Area Network (WAN), so each sub server operates autonomous and the main server has the task to collect the data from them.
