A new international organization, the Built Environment Technology Association (BETA), has been established to equip the real estate, construction, design, urban planning and facility management industries to better understand and utilize contemporary and developing technologies for the built environment. BETA will foster collaborative relationships with companies, vendors and trade organizations; develop a real-time communication portal; commission research; and produce educational and training products for these transformational technologies. 
For professionals working with the built environment, keeping abreast of the immense variety of technological fields can be challenging. Relevant technological frontiers are constantly evolving, merging, splitting and changing. Today, this includes advances in:

• machines talking to machines through the Internet of Things (IoT)
• smart buildings, campuses and cities
• building automation systems
• artificial intelligence and augmented reality
• design, material and construction technologies
• blockchain
• cyber security
• the cloud, mobility and analytics
• the evolution of integrated workplace management solutions (IWMS)
• building information modeling and collaboration tools
• 3D/4D/5D printing
• drones and more. 

Existing industry organizations that are exploring these technologies remain segmented. Depending on where in the building life-cycle they are primarily concerned, these groups evaluate different technological fields, and even when they consider similar fields they do so with different criteria. 
BETA will provide a platform and a community for people to come together from all over the world to discover what technologies are available at every stage of the built environment. BETA will also create a think tank for envisioning the “art of the long view” and the use of tech in the future which will, in many cases, transform the way we work. This community will include industry experts, end users and vendors from both the private and public sectors. 
Watch www.smartbeta.tech for ongoing developments.