From Gut Feeling to Data-Driven Decisions

Abstract

The real estate sector plays a crucial role in achieving the EU’s Green Deal climate goals. As 85–95% of today’s buildings are expected to remain in use beyond 2050, sustainable management and renovation of existing building stock have become key strategic priorities. Despite increasing sustainability requirements, decision-making in Real Estate Management (REM) still relies more on decision-makers’ personal experience than on data-driven decision-making. Digital Twins (DTs), as advanced IT-based and data-driven decision-support systems, promise to improve decision-making processes, including exploration, execution, monitoring, and evaluation. This is particularly relevant in sustainability-related contexts, involving multi-attribute and multi-stakeholder decisions. This study examines the challenges that real estate managers encounter when making strategic decisions, while highlighting identified needs and opportunities for DT-supported decision-making, as well as barriers to their deployment. Drawing on practical insights from twelve semi-structured, problem-centred expert interviews with thirteen real estate professionals in Austria and Switzerland, analysed through qualitative content analysis, the findings reveal six challenge clusters – organisation, resources, data, applications, processes, and the real estate object – each comprising interconnected challenges from which relevant goals, threats, and opportunities for DT-supported decision-making can be derived. The gap between the promise of DTs and their actual use in REM underscores the tension between technological potential and realised value in practice.