New European directives on energy efficiency, targeting a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be achieved by 2023, are triggering deep renovation building projects, which are largely responsible for these emissions. This high demand for the transformation of the existing building stock makes us consider the need to execute this type of renovation projects in the shortest period of time. Furthermore, it is important to offer an adequate cost/benefit balance for the proposed interventions.
And in this process of transition towards climate-neutral buildings, how can the use of new technologies and the application of methodologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) help in the implementation of deep renovation projects? The adoption of BIM models, traditionally used for new buildings, can provide important decision support when selecting solutions to be implemented in renovation projects. This was one of the main objectives of the H2020 BIM-SPEED Project, to improve deep renovation projects of residential buildings, reducing the time and costs associated with them, and promoting the use of BIM among the different stakeholders involved. To this end, standardised processes, with the creation of Use Cases, and different BIM‑based tools were developed as part of the BIM‑SPEED web platform ecosystem, as well as training materials on how to use these services1. To address interoperability issues, different ETLs (Extract, Transform and Load) and BIM connectors were implemented.
Interoperability framework between BIM tools and the BIM-SPEED web platform, showing the connection to the implemented ETLs and BIM Connectors. To ensure the reliability of the data, different Checker tools were applied
It was also possible to see how beneficial the combination of Machine Learning techniques with BIM models is for decision making in deep renovation projects, allowing the automatic selection of the most appropriate renovation option. This selection is based on national building envelope regulations, and also takes into consideration a number of user-defined input parameters on the limitations of its application2. The combination of the Scan to BIM process with the automatic creation of walls in BIM, using point clouds as input data, was also of great interest to end users3.
And now, what else?
The possibilities of using BIM models do not end with the renovation phase of the building. These models can also play a key role in the Operation and Maintenance phase. The development of Digital Building Twins based on BIM models can help in the optimisation and control of buildings to improve their energy performance. In line with this, projects such as BuildON, coordinated by CARTIF, and SMARTeeSTORY, the latter focused on monitoring and optimisation of the energy performance of non-residential historical buildings, are starting. We will keep you updated on further developments in future posts.
2 Mulero-Palencia, S.; Álvarez-Díaz, S.; Andrés-Chicote, M. Machine Learning for the Improvement of Deep Renovation Building Projects Using As-Built BIM Models. Sustainability2021, 13, 6576. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13126576
3 Álvarez-Díaz, S.; Román-Cembranos, J.; Lukaszewska, A.; Dymarski, P. 3D Modelling of Existing Asset Based on Point Clouds: A Comparison of Scan2BIM Approaches. In 2022 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Living Environment (MetroLivEn); IEEE, 2022; pp 274–279. https://doi.org/10.1109/MetroLivEnv54405.2022.9826964
The BIM approach (Building Information Modelling) is all around Architecture, Engineering and Construction professionals, but when it comes down, very few companies are founding their daily work on this paradigm and applications are really far from being homogeneous. BIM is many times (let’s say “usually”) incorrectly identified as a specific software package or a type of 3D digital model. However, BIM is much more than a newer version of CAD or a 3D visualisation tool.
The BIM approach provides a digital featuring of a building or infrastructure throughout its whole life-cycle, adding extra information to help making better and more-timely decisions upon a 3D model that allows a multidimensional analysis: 4D (evolution); 5D (costs); 6D (sustainability -including energy efficiency-); 7D (maintenance).
Although there is still a lack of knowledge on how BIM and associated digital innovations are applied across European countries, the European Directive 2014/24/EU imposes BIM Level 2 for government centrally procured projects. Level 2 refers a collaborative process of producing federated discipline specific models, consisting of 3D graphical data (those visually represented) and semantic data (those significant additions) as well as associated documentation (for instance: master plans). Information is exchanged using non-proprietary formats, such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC).
Consequently the built heritage is subject to BIM for the purposes of documentation, conservation and dissemination, but the distinctiveness and sensitivity to meet heritage demands requires technological and methodological particularizations leading to the concept of Heritage-BIM (H-BIM). The purpose of H-BIM is to provide a 3D parametric model as a “container” of information generated all over time by different procedures, by different people, and from different sources (hw & sw). The model would capture the multidisciplinary nature of Heritage, far away from the simplicity and modularity of conventional construction, and would be very useful to study, evaluate the state of conservation and plan interventions on the assets in a profitable way. It is quite a challenge for a sector where digitization is a pending issue.
This technologically means facing many challenges, starting with the minimum amount of graphical and semantic data that would be adequate to support the activities of the sector. Two of the most important are:
The combination of 3D data with different types of images (thermography, high resolution photographs or multispectral recordings) to produce a really useful H-BIM model for exhaustive assessment.
The photorealistic texturing of 3D models for a rigorous representation of reality.
Both aspects are being worked by CARTIF to decisively help companies, managers and public administrations in the digitization of Cultural Heritage.
In a world where sustainability is increasingly at the forefront of our concerns, the need for innovative solutions to transform our built environment is more pressing than ever. The current state of the EU building stock presents a significant challenge, acting as one of the largest energy consumers in Europe and responsible for over one third of the EU’s emissions.
Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the European Commission unveiled a new strategy in October 2020: “A Renovation Wave for Europe – Greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives.” This strategy represents a crucial step forward, aiming to incentivize investments in renovation and support the implementation of efficient methods and technologies.
Despite these efforts, the reality remains stark – over 75% of the EU building stock is not energy-efficient, and the annual renovation rate languishes at a mere 1%. The strategy emphasizes the need for deep renovations, those achieving over 60% reduction in energy consumption, as a top priority. The overarching goal? To double annual energy renovation rates over the next decade, not only to reduce emissions but also to enhance the quality of life for building occupants and create green jobs in the construction sector.
To achieve the depth and volume of renovation required, a strong and competitive construction sector is essential. Embracing innovation and sustainability is paramount to increasing quality and reducing production and installation costs. The Built4People European Partnership highlights three pillars crucial to this endeavour:
Industrialized Technological Solutions: Embracing advanced technologies to streamline construction processes.
Digitalization of the Construction Industry: Leveraging digital tools such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) to improve transparency and efficiency.
Integration of Circularity Principles: Incorporating circular economy principles across the entire value chain, from materials sourcing to waste management.
In the midst of this pressing need for renovation innovation, REHOUSEemerges as a beacon of hope. Coordinated by CARTIF and under the Horizon Europe program, REHOUSE is poised to lead the charge in innovation within the construction sector. With a laser focus on deep renovations and circularity principles, REHOUSE aims to develop and demonstrate eight renovation packages incorporating promising technology innovations up to TRL7 (Integrated pilot system demonstrated).
These renovation packages are meticulously designed to overcome the main barriers that impede current EU renovation ratios. Through the integration of active/passive elements, prefabrication, and off-site construction, REHOUSE seeks to deliver affordable and sustainable renovation solutions with the flexibility to address nearly 100% of building renovation challenges at the EU level.
But what truly sets REHOUSE apart is its people-centric approach. By actively engaging residents and building owners throughout the renovation process, the project ensures that solutions are not only sustainable but also affordable, satisfactory, and attractive.
REHOUSE is now at its halfway point, demonstrating remarkable progress and achievements. The project has already established the basis for the social innovation strategy, detailed the specifications of innovative solutions, and produced digital versions of the Renovation Packages. Additionally, an innovative evaluation framework and technical building diagnosis of the demo-sites have been completed. The validation of the Renovation Packages (RPs) is underway to achieve TRL6 (Prototype system verified), accompanied by the development of guidelines for their industrialization. Furthermore, the project is actively defining specifications for the Digital Building Logbook, designing and preparing the groundwork for the later construction of the demo-sites, and outlining the pathway towards market achievement after the project concludes. These efforts mark the beginning of our journey to revolutionize renovation processes, driven by innovation and collaboration.
Join us on this transformative journey as we pave the way for a brighter, greener tomorrow with REHOUSE. Together, we can reshape our built environment, create sustainable spaces, and preserve our planet for generations to come.
This project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101079951.
Decarbonization is the “trending topic” of terms related to sustainability, energy and the environment. It is the process of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere. Decarbonization means reducing climate change and dependence on fossil fuels, which are precisely those that emit CO2 when burned (clear examples are fuel-oil and coal). Decarbonization implies the use of cleaner energy sources, but also the adoption of technologies and methods to protect the environment and to reduce these emissions (the so-called “carbon footprint”).
However, what does this have to do with Cultural Heritage? Well, you will be surprised for sure, but it turns out that Heritage contribuyes many important things to decarbonization: the preservation of historical buildings, the reuse of spaces, the promotion of sustainable mobility, the promotion of cultural tourism and technological innovation in the assessment and the conservation of historical assets. In other words, it turns out that offers an environmentally friendly approach to urban planning and rural development.
If we go into a little more detail, you will see that Cultural Heritage can play a significant role in decarbonization and the fight against climate change. Here we provide you five ways to do so, but I´m quite sure your are able to think of some more (please tell us):
Technological innovation applied to conservation1 of historic buildings (where CARTIF has a lot to say): here the sensitivity required by historic buildings implies the development of specific techniques and technologies, which have broader applications in reducing carbon emissions in other fields of construction and environmental management. The digitally based technical inspection, the preventive conservation and the intervention involving H-BIM avoid both ruin and/or demolition, as well as new alternative constructions, which significantly reduces the material and energy resources to be used for these purposes. Furthermore, and this is worthy of remark, the old buildings were designed and built up with techniques and materials that are inherently sustainable, taking advantage of aspects that we are “rediscovering” right now such as orientation, natural ventilation and the use of native materials.
Reuse of spaces: Historical sites and buildings can be suitable adapted for new uses and transformed into living or working spaces with a level of comfort appropriate to the 21st century, which in the medium-long term saves resources compared to the construction of new substitute structures. This reuse contributes to greater energy efficiency and the reduction of carbon emissions.
Adaptation and transcription of ancient professional techniques: historic places are examples of how antique societies adapted to environmental challenges (which have always existed) and how lessons learned in the past can be adopted today through proper understanding and technological shift of traditional techniques and uses (both materials and methods).
Promotion of sustainable mobility: The preservation of historic centres in cities increasingly promotes sustainable mobility. In fact, they were desgined to move on foot, on horseback or in wagons and carriages. Therefore, they absolutely favour pedestrian accesibility and the use of public transport instead of private vehicles. This reduces dependence on fossil fuels and decreases greenhouse gas emissions.
Development of sustainable cultural tourism: it is more than proven that sustainable cultural tourism can play an important role in the local economy and even in the region, encouraging more environmentally friendly practices such as waste management, conservation of biodiversity and the promotion of quality agri-food and crafts.
But, does Cultural Heritage really do that much? Obviously yes. Indeed, a lot. In line with the priorities of the European Green Deal and the EU´s climate ambition for 2030 and 2050, the European Cultural Heritage Green Paper emerged in 2021, where indeed it is already considered a driver of decarbonization and mirror upon which citizens see themselves as key actors in the actions needed on this regard.
Historic building and decarbonization is a bionmial over which the Cultural Heritage & Regeneration Committee of the European Construction Technology Platform has been working for years (CARTIF takes part of the Executive Board). Its latest strategic research agenda for the period 2021-2027, promptly refers to this. And it is an issue that has been deepen into recent plenary assemblies. It is no wonder when 24% of the residential buildings in Europe date back to before 1945, nearly half of them have historical value, and of this latter, 73% are located in cities, which is precisely where the alrgest carbon footprint is made.
From now on, will you see Heritage with an additional view further than cultural, religious and tourist ones? Another thing for you to know.
1 In line with UNESCO and ICOMOS usage related to tangible heritage, conservation is considered as the umbrella term to cover a range of preservation, conservation, restoration, (re)use, interpretation and management activities.
This phrase, which is now part of history and sounds familiar to most of us, even if we belong to a different generation, was used by the astronauts on board the Apollo 13 spacecraft after an oxygen tank on board explosion. This happened two days after the start of their spatial mission to land on the Moon, which had been launched on April 11, 1970. It was watched by millions of people around the world for days to find out what the destiny of the three astronauts on boards the spacecraft would be. Meanwhile, NASA worked against the clock to generate a digital replica using computer-controlled simulators that would replicate the conditions that were occurring in space. This model, which was true to reality, allowed them to predict how the spacecraft would behave in space in order to find the most appropriate solution to bring the crew back. This could be considered as the first approach towards the concept of Digital Twin.
There are many different definitions of the concept of Digital Twin, one of the first being given by Michael Grieves, an expert in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The definition of Grieves was focused on the virtual comparison between what had been produced with the previous product design (produced vs designed), with the aim of improving production processes1. The field of application of Digital Twin is very broad, as are the possible definitions. In general terms, we can consider a Digital Twin as a digital representation of a physical asset, or a process or system, from the real physical world.
Digital twins are based on their fidelity to reality, to the physical world, allowing us to make future predictions and optimisations. The intention is that both ecosystems, that of the physical world and the ecosystem of the Digital Twin (with the representation of the virtual world), have a co-evolution with each other. That is, they are affected by each other in a synchronised manner. This is possible because both models are automatically connected in a bi-directional way. When there is only the automatic connection in a uni-directional way, and that would go from the real model existing in the physical world to the digital model of the virtual world, we cannot call it as such a Digital Twin. For these cases it would be called Digital Shadow. A digital model by itself could not be considered a Digital Twin if there is no automatic connection between the physical and the virtual world. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) together with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, including Machine Learning (ML), allow the Digital Twin to learn, predict and simulate future behaviour to improve its operation.
And all this Digital Twin thing, for what’
The use of digital twins can be used in numerous fields, for example in industrial manufacturing lines, to improve production processes, or aspects such as energy and environmental sustainability, fields in which projects such as ECOFACT are currently working. Another use of digital twins could be their applications in Smart Cities, which could improve road management, waste collection, etc. At the building level, its application can be useful both at the tertiary level (those buildings dedicated to the service sector), for example an airport, where it could be used to predict and manage the building more adequately based on usage patterns associated with scheduled air traffic. It is also useful in commercial or industrial buildings, focusing in this case on the building itself, and not on the production line mentioned above. At the residential level, the Digital Building Twin (DBT) could also be of great use to us, as we could predict the thermal behaviour of the building, associated with usage patterns, in order to improve the thermal conditioning of the indoor environment and minimise the energy consumption, among other options.
CARTIF has been working for some time on the creation of Digital Models of building based on BIM (Building Information Modelling), for different purposes, such us improving decision-making when carrying out deep renovation buildings projects. In this case, the use of BIM is intended to achieve a more appropriate renovation, and to reduce the time and cost in this renovation projects, with projects such as OptEEmAL or BIM-SPEED. The use of BIM models would function as a facilitator for the integration of the static (Physical world) and dynamic (logical and Digital world from IoT-Internet of Things network data) systems of a building. In addition, the use of BIM provides control over all phases of a building’s life cycle, from design, construction, commissioning of systems, the operation and maintenance phase, as well as possible demolition.
Concept of linking the Physical and Digital world through BIM-based Digital Twins
The challenge ahead of us in the coming years, focused on achieving climate-neutral cities that are more sustainable, functional and inclusive, suggests that the use of digital twins will be increasingly used in these areas, thanks to the benefits they can bring.
