Distributed Knowledge Bases as an Integrated Buildings System

Changing working processes not only in manufacturing and assembly but also in office work require advanced buildings which allow a maximum of flexibility towards building structure and all its services (HVAC, telecommunications etc.). To gether with the growing importance of shared tenant services in intelligent buildings, theattempt to reach low-energy consuming buildings despite of their required flexibility in supplying a good infrastructure leads to a growing importance of "building performance". After the concentration on automated manufacturing and assembly (CAD/CAM,CIM information systems etc.) the next step is "building automation". Of course, to design, build and maintain an advanced building is too complex to be solved without computers -and even if it is done computer-based, it still requires more sophisticated programming paradigms than conventional software engineering offers. Because of the excessive complexity of the building model which has to be represented, only distributed, loosely coupled knowledge bases promise a practical apporach. This means, intelhgent buildings need to be designed, built and maintained with intelligent tools, in other words with 'Distributed Expert Systems as an Integrated Building System".