Digital Twin for Office Asset Management
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
The project aims to define an occupancy-oriented Digital Twin to efficiently monitor, manage, and optimize an office building based on the actual occupancy. Spaces will be organized, assigned, cleaned, and maintained according to actual users’ needs. Indoor Environmental Quality will be monitored and controlled. Users will express their opinions and suggestions, and the system will target their satisfaction and well-being in the workplace promoting inclusiveness and energy and cost savings.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
The project will define a Decision Support System (DSS) based on an occupancy-oriented Passive Digital Twin (DT), integrating building static data from Post-Occupancy Evaluations (POEs) and building databases, and real-time occupancy and indoor environmental conditions monitored by an IoT network. Cameras with an embedded deep learning algorithm will enable to anonymously monitor occupancy in common spaces, access and leaving of individual offices and other spaces, without recognizing users or monitoring their individual workspaces, consequently ensuring the complete respect of their privacy. In addition, air quality, temperature and lighting sensors will enable to monitor workplaces conditions and to control thermal systems through actuators. Data from the monitoring networks will be analyzed through a dashboard to highlight actual building occupancy and indoor environmental conditions patterns by means of data visualization and analytics techniques. The dashboard will also enable to perform simulations to optimize the use of spaces and operation and maintenance services, according to the actual space occupancy or hypothesizing occupancy scenarios. The dashboard will act as a Passive Digital Twin, in which the strategies to be implemented in the real building are performed by the facility manager, integrating dashboard data and users’ suggestions and evaluations regarding the workplaces. An application will be implemented in the proposed system allowing users to evaluate space organization, cleanness and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). The integration of building data monitoring, analysis, and simulation, and user evaluations will ensure an optimized asset management and users’ satisfaction over time. The Digital Twin applied to the ABC Department of Politecnico di Milano university will allow energy and costs savings and will promote sustainability principles in the asset management by including the users in the feedback loop.
Key objectives for sustainability
The proposed Digital Twin (DT) system will ensure an increased sustainability of operation and maintenance (O&M) processes in office buildings. It will enable to monitor occupancy and space usage, and indoor environmental conditions (thermal and visual comfort and Indoor Air Quality) at room level. Typically, the O&M process in office buildings is characterized by a standardized and uniform functioning of heating, cooling, and lighting systems, and by cleaning services which are typically based only on building floor areas, hence the system aims at increase the granularity of the information and the service. In a short-term view, the proposed system will enable to clean, maintain, and operate the offices and administrative spaces of ABC Department building according to their actual use. In addition, the system will enable to use and control heating and cooling systems at room-level and according to actual users’ presence and space occupancy. This, in turn, will enable a more efficient use of resources and it will enable to reduce energy and resource waste, increasing users’ awareness through active participation in providing information and suggestions. In a long-term view, the spaces will be organized according to historical data and continuous monitoring data aiming at minimizing vacancies. Consequently, buildings will be used at nearly full capacity, optimizing their use and O&M, minimizing space, energy, and resource waste. Circularity will be thus addressed by reducing waste and optimizing people flow and participation, and creating a safer, efficient, comfortable environment where the occupancy-based DT can allow to control and visualize critical areas and malfunctioning preserving users’ privacy and wellbeing. Sustainability protocols could support the selection of criteria to evaluate the success of the strategies and will be communicated to the users through extended reality (Virtual reality or augmented reality).
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The proposed system will guarantee a better quality of experience for all users of the office building and can define a methodology of intervention for other office buildings. Spaces will be operated, maintained and cleaned according to their actual use, increasing cleaning and maintenance of more utilized spaces. In addition, the system will enable to monitor indoor environmental conditions, and consequently to adjust internal conditions to ensure an increased Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) of spaces. This, in turn, will improve user comfort, satisfaction, productivity and overall well-being. Users will also be able to express their satisfaction and evaluation on spaces and indoor environmental conditions increasing the sense of belonging and inclusive participation. The system will integrate data from the monitoring and dashboard, and from users’ evaluations to improve the user experience, quality and satisfaction regarding their workplaces. Functionality will be thus improved and quality of experience can promote a better use of the spaces by the users. Moreover, dedicated and focused cleaning activities will improve also the aesthetic perception and value of the spaces where users spent a great part of their daily activities and lives. The privacy of the workers is guaranteed and protected to increase safety and security in the use of the spaces with additional benefits. The communication methods can boost the control operated by the managers and the safety and security of users without reducing their possibility to use the spaces and, indeed, they can perceive the support given by the technology to their needs of comfort and wellbeing. Hundreds of people (i.e., teaching and research staff and administration staff) use the pilot building and they have different daily schedule and use of the offices, distribution and service spaces. The users’ involvement will support analytics to promote customized activities to enhance different uses and daily schedules.
Key objectives for inclusion
Through the monitoring of space occupancy and uses, it will be possible to uncover over-utilized spaces, and consequently users in need of more spaces, or spaces that are underutilized. This will enable to allocate more spaces to users according to their actual needs, while converting some underutilized spaces into common rooms, co-working spaces, or spaces that can be used by reservation via app. Consequently, an equal access to available and comfortable working spaces will be granted for all users. In addition, considering the current COVID-related situation, an increasing number of users will partially maintain remote working practices. The definition of common working spaces and spaces that can be reserved via app, will facilitate the accessibility to office spaces to remote workers. This will also give the possibility to workers with a family or other special needs to have a more flexible management of working schedules and spaces, facilitating the organization of every day’s tasks and increasing their overall well-being. Furthermore, user participation to the operation and maintenance (O&M) phase will be ensured by the possibility to express their opinions and suggestions on the use and indoor environmental conditions of spaces allowing for continuous improvement of asset management. In a long-term view, data collected through continuous monitoring will allow to have large dataset for more conscious design of future buildings that will be more coherent with user needs and will need less adjustments after the design and construction phases. Finally, facility managers will also have benefits from the system implementation. The system will act as a Decision Support System for facility managers to optimize building use according to actual use, allowing for a precise and continuously updated management of cleaning services and space usage, while ensuring user well-being and satisfaction regarding their workplaces.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The project proposes the definition of a comprehensive methodology and uses a complete system to optimize the asset management procedures, allowing to integrate and combine the three dimensions of sustainability, quality of experience, and inclusion. A proper monitoring of spaces usage and occupancy, and the promotion of an increased Indoor Environmental Quality, and the analysis and simulation of occupancy scenarios on one hand will ensure a better office building asset management, and more detailed and precise O&M processes. Consequently, it will be possible to optimize space management and organization, and the use of energy and resources for space cleaning and operation. On the other hand, the system will ensure an improved user experience, and consequently an overall increasing of satisfaction and well-being, as the workplace is one of the places in which people spend most of their time during the daily activities. The combination of the three dimensions is addresses by a holistic view that promote the New European Bauhaus values promoting energy efficiency, efficient space management, comfort for the users through an enhanced indoor environmental quality (e.g., thermal, visual, acoustic, indoor air quality comfort). These parameters are scientifically recognized as key factors for users’ productivity, wellbeing and increased cognitive capacities, which is strongly relevant in office, learning and research spaces, as well as in university, schools and healthcare facilities. For that reason, the project can have a high level of replicability and scalability in other buildings with different uses and dimensions. The innovation of the use of artificial intelligence applied to IoT (Internet of Things) networks will also promote the integration of privacy, safety and security issues with optimized results. The definition of a dashboard for analytics processing and visualization can improve comprehension and participation in the process increasing the impacts.
