How to manage the elevators is also a serious problem in the business towers, where tens of floors of elevators serve at the same time, where thousands of people enter and exit during the day.
Elevator management should be examined under two separate headings.
Especially in multi-storey buildings, the first objective is to get the passenger inside the elevators to the floor where he/she will arrive in the fastest manner. For this purpose, passengers ascending or descending in the same direction should be enabled to get on the same elevator and the elevator should not stop in the floors requested even if in the direction it moves when the elevator is full, and should not lead to unnecessary waiting. For this, elevator companies produce keypads where passengers press the buttons for the floors they want to ascend or descend instead of calling directional buttons, so they can operate the system more efficiently by knowing how many people are waiting for the elevator and which floors they want to ascend or descend to. Let's leave this matter to the elevator companies and proceed with our main topic.
We have ensured our security from the main entrance by applying access control systems at the entrance of the building, but what about the floors? How do we ensure that the person who confirms his/her identity with card reader or biometric identification systems at the main entrance only ascend or descend to the floors that he/she is authorized?
The first thing that comes to mind here is to place one of the card reader or biometric identification systems in the elevator and to apply a second identity verification to the person getting on the elevator. This solution can be easily applied in the buildings where the entire building belongs to a single corporation and/or where there are special elevators for the floors where the limitation of authority is desired. When a valid card is read by the card reader in the elevator, it is sufficient to connect a contact to the elevator control panel.
At business centers where there are multiple companies and elevators are shared, the situation becomes too complicated to be solved with a card reader and relay output. We can resolve this only with the integrated operation of the elevator management system and the security system. It would not be wrong to say that integration is the concept on which the most discussion takes place in the building management systems. The reason for these discussions is the use of the term integration as plain. However, when the expectation is not described correctly and clearly, the application made by giving signal through a relay contact can be considered as integration. Integration is the integration of the elevator management software and the security software in which the data of the security system can communicate with each other in two directions and a common management platform is established by using the data of the elevators within the security system in the management of the elevator.
When we integrate the elevator management system and the security systems, we need to carry out the passenger management accordingly. The keypads on the floors will be replaced by card readers or biometric identification devices of the security system and the person will verify his/her identity when calling the elevator. The system shall allow a person to create a demand only for ascending or descending to a single floor and only to the authorized floors. By pressing the button for the same floor repeatedly from the keypad, it will be prevented from creating a virtual request and it will ensure that the elevators are used more efficiently. In addition, since the person is authenticated, he/she may also be prevented from boarding the cabins that receive calls from the floors that he/she is not authorized or take passengers to those floors.
When the security is requested to be applied at a much higher level, tag readers can be placed on the elevator floor doors and the cards on the people passing through the doors can be read and a system alarm can be generated for the people getting off the cabin on the floors that they are authorized. When the security systems are operated as a whole, a person who does not have a card or has no access to that floor can be recorded with cameras, the security scenarios of that floor can be activated, and the floor doors can be locked automatically.
Briefly, the integration of the elevator management software and the security systems enables the elevators to be used more efficiently and serves to enhance the security without disturbing the comfort of the building residents.
