A holistic Digital Twin platform for decision-making support over the whole building life cycle

The project is a step forward towards establishing digitalization in the building sector and enhancing the energy efficiency in buildings through the development and demonstration of a holistic building Digital Twin platform. The Digital Twin combines building models and real-time data to aid decision support over the whole building life cycle.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is one of the major drivers of building sector digitalization. In the current practice, BIM covers the minimum requirements set by guidelines and is put in a drawer after the building handover with no use for facility operation and management. As owners will spend over 80% of the facility life cycle cost during the operation phase, the project will develop a holistic Digital Twin platform allowing coordinated decision support over the whole building life cycle. The platform replaces the traditional static BIM with a living operational model combining flexible and adaptable dynamic energy models and real-time building data. Employing the proposed Digital Twin, 1) owners will have higher energy efficient buildings from day one, 2) facility managers will have a tool for smarter facility management through advanced monitoring, automated continuous commissioning and timely maintenance intervention, 3) consultants and planners will have a solution aiding in strategy planning and optimal decision-making through running ‘What if?’ scenarios in advance, predicting impacts and testing control and management regimes in virtual environment. Demonstration of the solution will be done through case studies conducted on three buildings; SDU building OU44, Dokk1 on Aarhus harbor and a hospital building in Bergen Norway.