PropTech (property technology) is a term that describes electronic tools used in the real estate industry. It’s a buzzword that has made its way into the physical security industry, often in connection with access control. For the latest insights on the trends of security in PropTech, we asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: What is the role of security as property technology (PropTech) transforms the real estate market?
The rise of PropTech coincides with the movement toward the unification of security systems. It is a force multiplier for landlords, building managers, and commercial tenants and visitors. By unifying video, access control, automatic license plate recognition, intrusion detection, intercom, call stations, and analytics technology, property managers can capture and analyse data across the entire system for much greater awareness, responsiveness, and evidence sharing within the security realm. With PropTech, an office building or hospital can now combine the tools of its unified security system with sensors and apps that track air quality, traffic flow – even smart elevators, lighting, and heating. Through the unified security system’s monitoring and analytics tools, property managers can aggregate even more data that can be used to inform decisions about space utilisation, planning, provisioning, and portfolio management. It also helps them deliver a modern, engaging experience to building occupants and visitors. Tenants can also benefit from the additional data; for example, checking occupancy stats to help them avoid busy times in shared spaces like gyms and cafes.
The real estate market is not exempt from digitisation. With the rise of PropTech, we must adapt existing security measures to ensure that the property industry can become smarter and more sustainable. This optimisation can be achieved by integrating video security with sensors and access control technology. Maintaining one property is a challenge, let alone many, but sound detection or entryway tracking alert those monitoring video management systems to know if and when there is any movement between spaces. Adding motion or proximity sensors to door frames lets you know when the door opens while maintaining the moving person’s anonymity. Privacy should not be completely disregarded for the sake of security, and such information can be used to improve workplace satisfaction or when deciding how to upgrade your office. Security also enables a cost-benefit analysis to be made in real estate. Furthermore, empty spaces, as determined by the video security system, do not need the same amenities as a room occupied by people. Therefore, you can equip integrated systems to pause heating, air-conditioning, or HVAC until a person is detected entering the room, which reduces energy, time spent cleaning, and bills. These sensors and proactive alerts are paramount to keeping buildings, property, and people safe, and integrated systems are time and cost efficient.
Access and data are the two major touchpoints between security and PropTech right now. Integrating with access control can provide a new experience, open up new revenue streams and give us insights into how our spaces are utilised. Think of self-guided tours, mobile-centric services, and amenity reservations. Security will need to partner with PropTech to help ensure that these new experiences can be delivered safely and securely. This is a move to safe, secure access enablement.
With the likes of Airbnb championing the use of greater automation and more rapid turnaround of temporary access in letting property, integrated access control systems are in a prime position to facilitate this. These systems are also perfect for leisure/condominium sites, incorporating secure access to apartments with ANPR (licence plate recognition) for vehicles and even additional access to restricted areas such as golf courses, gyms, or leisure facilities. This approach has been popular in university campuses for some time, where students and staff tend to have authentication credentials with them for access to the site. Several hotel chains are now offering their customer smartphone app to not only book a room but grant access once you reach the hotel as well. These systems add convenience and flexibility to end users and help to reduce the staffing/resourcing burdens for the operator in terms of admin requirements. Equally, they can help with the running of the facility, too, with lift (elevator) management to maximise people flow, along with the regulation of heating/ventilation and lighting to match needs. This is also a great opportunity for mining data on the facilities to better understand operational efficiencies.