Digital Twins for Building Renovation – What is the Added Value?

Abstract

Driven by Europe’s ageing building stock and the EU’s sustainability targets, renovation of existing buildings has become increasingly important. Building renovation typically comprises three types of activities (operations & facility management, condition assessment & monitoring, and transformation planning), each involving key decisions that can benefit from advanced decision support systems such as digital twins (DTs). DTs carry the promise of improved decision-making about, as well as the monitoring and understanding of, the twinned entity. This paper investigates how DTs can support, and add value to, the decision-making involved in building renovation and how the added value of these DTs can be assessed and (ideally be) quantified. In doing so, this paper focuses primarily on operations & facility management-related activities. By connecting use cases with quantification methods, this paper suggests pathways to evaluate and prioritise DT investments in the context of building renovation.