US-based Tridium, a global software and services company which develops and markets a universal software framework targeted at solving the challenges associated with managing smart devices, has recently completed the installation of the its Niagara Framework at the architecturally-striking 21st Century Tower in Dubai.

Standing 53 storeys and 269 m high, the 21st Century Tower in Dubai is the tallest apartment block in the world and is also the latest landmark development to feature Tridium’s web-serving building services control solution.
The installation of Tridium’s Niagara Framework by Dubai-based Pacific Controls – a leading systems’ integrator in the UAE – has ensured rapid, comprehensive and successful integration of the tower’s complex range of building services equipment.
Services designed to operate on independent Bacnet, LonWorks and Modbus control bus networks, are now all connected in a single, open, interoperable and remotely accessible web-based control environment without the need for any gateways, complex programming or expensive BMS supervisors, says Nigel MacKenzie, business development manager at Pacific Controls.
Completed last December, the 21st Century Tower – situated on the central downtown section of Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road – is an elegant structure, shaped to depict an expression of two birds in flight, and houses 300 three-bedroom and 100 two-bedroom apartments offering over 71,000 sq m of luxury living space.
Over 1,800 locally controlled fan coil units, fed with chilled water via a variable flow system, provide the essential comfort cooling. Air handling, pump, power, fire detection, security and other services are distributed in the basement, mezzanine, ninth  floor, 30th floor and 53rd floor plant rooms throughout the building.
Directly behind the 21st Century Tower is the building’s adjoining nine-storey car park, which is also home to its five huge 525-tonne water-cooled chillers, cooling towers, additional pumps and electrical substations.
Thanks to Tridium’s Niagara Framework, the complex array of multi-vendor control sub-systems installed on the project, comprising in total more than 4,000 control points, have been integrated onto one network by Pacific Controls. The five centrifugal Carrier chillers and the building’s Simplex fire alarm system are both controlled by devices using the BACNET protocol whilst the 15 Honeywell HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) controller outstations, ASTI access control system and CEAG emergency lighting control system operate on LonWorks.
Schneider Electric power monitoring units and FG Wilson generators working on the Modbus communication protocol have also been integrated, along with a Vicon CCTV system using TCP/IP protocol. The Niagara Framework talks to each controller using its native protocol and respective network in one common, distributed and genuinely open environment, irrespective of controller type and manufacturer, and without the need for special gateways.
The Niagara Framework also provides control system access via any standard web browser. Graphical information is served up as HTML pages to ensure that supervisory actions can easily take place through any secure access Internet connection.
The Niagara Framework is embedded with four Tridium JACE 512 control units, installed at different points throughout the 21st Century Tower. Because the control system can be engineered via a web-browser, it was able to support multiple access and parallel binding locations.
“The Tridium solution has provided us with a fully open, web-based system architecture, which is easy to access and control and has allowed straightforward integration of almost any building services equipment, whether its controller uses the BACNET, Modbus or LonWorks protocol” says MacKenzie.
“The project consultants, W S Atkins, are delighted with how the controls aspect of the job has worked, claiming it to be one of those very rare occasions when the promised integration of sub-systems has actually delivered.”
Tridium’s core technology, the patent-pending Niagara Framework (or Niagara), a Java-based framework, provides a software infrastructure to integrate diverse systems and devices – regardless of manufacturer or communication protocol – into a unified platform that can be easily managed in real time over the Internet using a standard web browser.
Niagara is being successfully applied in energy-services, building-automation, and industrial-automation markets across the globe.