Reframing Our Future with Digital Twins and Building Logbooks

JUSTIN TAYLOR: Hi, and welcome to our session Reframing the Future with Digital Twins and Building Logbooks. So let's begin with understanding more about what these terms actually mean. What is a digital twin exactly?

Well, just as when we asked the question some years back and still do to be honest about what BIM is, the list of definitions is as long as the time you can spend trawling the internet. But here are six examples of what a digital twin for a building can mean.

Firstly, we have design and construct digital twins. We have assets, system-level digital twins, building operations, lifecycle digital twins, and occupant experience digital twins. The ultimate goal is to leverage digital twins to improve the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings, making them more efficient, more sustainable, and user centric.

Digital twin types can be further classified by their maturity. Verdantix, the research and advisory firm that acts as an essential thought leader for world enhancing innovation, proposed a maturity model for digital twins comprised of five levels. Firstly, a descriptive twin provides the foundation for normalizing data for facilities asset spaces and systems, et cetera, leveraging the as built design and construction data.

Then we move into an informative twin, augmented with the description twin with the operational and sensor data both normalizing this data and delivering real time and historical insights. Next up with predictive twins where we introduce analytics to provide early fault detection and predictive insights for optimizing building operations. Comprehensive twins as simulations for what-if scenarios and how we might upgrade a system to affect the building performance or reconfigure a space to affect its occupant utilization.

And, finally, we've got the autonomous twin, leveraging AI models to act on behalf of the occupants and/or self-tune the facility. It's important to note that it's not necessarily a linear progression. However, it is important to establish normalized data standards at the descriptive and informative stages in order to create a foundation for future stages.

Next, let's look at the DNA of a digital twin. Another way of thinking about this is looking at the various asset phases, i.e. planning, building, operating, and maintaining. And, here, we can see the feature ranging from model 3D representation through data and visualization, all the way to AI and analytics against the different stages of planning, building, operating, and maintaining. Because we only have a short period of time in this session, today, we're going to focus on physical properties, design simulation, engineering data, operational data, state display, and service data.

But before we move on, what is a digital building logbook? Mantas, seriously, you are Star Trek obsessed. I said building log not captain's log. Come on. That's better.

So a digital logbook is a proposal aimed at establishing a common approach that aggregates all relevant data about a building and ensures that the authorized people can access accurate information about the building. Let's look at an example. Let's take a headwall out of a hospital as an example. It's a complicated assembly of structure, pipes, cables, valves, et cetera.

A digital twin and a logbook combined needs to hold all the assets physical and non-tangible information, including its maintenance history, but also allow this data to be filtered based on a user's requirements. We can see in this image some of the personas that will interact with this headwall, from the patient, the medical staff, the hospital manager, construction manager, fabricator, mechanical engineer, and the architect. They all are required to access different types of data about the same object to carry out their various functions.

On top of this, though, we need to understand how the data is structured. And most of us are familiar with data taxonomy, which is a hierarchical structure that separates data into specific classes based on common characteristics. The taxonomy represents a convenient way to classify data, prove it's unique and without redundancy. And this includes both primary and generative data elements.

We are all familiar with how Revit structured data by default, e.g. a designer will create a new project, which will have levels on which there will be rooms. And inside the rooms, it will contain furniture or equipment. So a hospital bed knows which room it's been placed in, what level the room is on, and what building it resides in. And, again, if we look at these individuals, we can see that each persona is requiring that information through this taxonomy of hierarchy.

So the contractor's view, they're looking at equipment, which is in their headwall in a room, on a level, in a building. That's fairly straightforward. But if we really want to get the maximum potential out of a digital twin and a digital logbook, we need to look at ontology next.

So ontology allows us to connect entities and understand their relationships. It serves as a foundation for creating intelligent, interconnected digital twins of buildings. And it enables better data management, analysis, and decision making, ultimately leading to more efficient and sustainable building operations and an improved user experience.

So, here, we have the same headwall. But if we were to look at replacing or servicing a power socket, that power socket is hosted in the headwall. And that headwall has the metadata. The headwall panel is hosted in the wall panel, which in turn is through the room, the ward, the department, the floor, and the building.

So that's your taxonomy. But that power socket has rules constraining it. It is connected back into an electrical conduit. And that conduit has a rule which means it must have a clearance above the medical gas pipe, which in turn is above the security console. So these interplay and capture of rules and constraints supports actionable insight.

As an interesting note, the European Union is supporting sustainability of the construction industry using something called BUILDCHAIN project. And the idea is that we're going to create these digital building logbooks to be used by municipalities, et cetera. And they will provide mechanisms and interfaces for the relevant stakeholders to publish, trace, share, tokenize and even trade models in an open market economy. Essentially, this is the way that we're going to improve overall sustainability of our assets through the coming years.

So let's just take a look at what are material passports? Well, a material passport supports a circular economy that allows us to make sustainable material selections. It helps us with maintenance and renovation, health and safety, value preservation, regulatory compliance, and certification. We've understood now about the digital logbook, digital twin, and material passport, but why should we care about this?

Well, we're all aware of what's going on in the world with climate change today. The 1.5 degrees is stated in the Paris Agreement. Children born today will face disproportionate increases in floods, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, crop failures due to climate change. The consequence of children suffering unprecedented sequences of climate extremes over the course of their lives can now be attributed to the inaction of us today as adults.

If that isn't enough, perhaps we should look at the financial motivation. The money and resources spent on repeatedly surveying, drafting, modeling, and analyzing existing buildings is mind boggling, in the tens of thousands of pounds each year. Why should we be investing in digital twins? It can reduce this, this survey, this constant survey.

Around 90% of older office buildings in the world need retrofitting. And yet we do not know half of what is inside them, what materials are in there, if that material can be recycled, et cetera. This is why we need to go down this route and make a fundamental change. So Mantas, how do we measure all of this?

MANTAS SMIDTAS: Yeah, thank you, Justin. Happy to be there. Question is, how we do measure things? We measure carbon footprint by amount of the greenhouse gases produced by a vehicle, person, group event, or product, which includes things like a transportation and energy use. So carbon footprint measured in total amount of the carbon dioxide, it shows how much an activity impacts the environment. We all understand how important it is to reduce carbon footprint to fight climate change.

As you see in the picture, mobile emission refers to a burning of fuel by the various transportation devices, including cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, ships, and other means of the transportation. Stationary emission are generated by burning fuel in the stationary equipment such as a boilers, furnaces, and other devices used to generate electricity, steam, and heat of power. Process emission are emission generated during the manufacturing process such as the release of the carbon dioxide from the breakdown of the calcium carbonate during the cement manufacturing process.

So fugitive emission refers to release of the greenhouse gases that occurs either intentionally or unintentionally such as a leak of the joins, seals, and packing or the emission of the sulfur hexafluoride gas from the circuit breakers. For example, only in Canada in 2021, GHG total stationary emission was around 300 megatons, where transport generates 188 megatons, industrial process 55 megatons. Fugitive process generates 55 megatons carbon dioxide.

There are several methods and tools that can be used to measure carbon footprint. But the basic steps involved in calculating a carbon emission footprint are identify scope of the carbon footprint, collect data on emission sources, calculate the emissions, and report them back. So the first is identify the scope of the carbon emission footprint.

In our example, we're using InfraWorks model, Toronto City model to identify the area we want to calculate, where the red line indicates the calculation area for mobile carbon footprint, blue point indicates the road traffic distribution. This includes identifying the boundaries of the activity and entity being measured and determining which emission sources will be included in the footprint. Model involved a focus on the entire design lifecycle from the data capture to data management and analysis.

This approach is crucial for a large-scale project as it ensures that data is being collected and analyzed in the way that facilities, the creation of the comprehensive and effective solution. In the terms of data capture, it is important to consider that types of the data are relevant to the project and how that data can be collected accurately and efficient.

This may involve using a variety of the tools and techniques, such as GIS mapping survey and aerial photography. Once the data is captured, it must be managed and analyzed in the way that allows actionable insight to be a draw from it. This may involve using advanced data analysis tools and techniques, as well as working closely with the subject matter experts to ensure that data is being used efficiently.

Finally, the data must be connected together in the way that facilitates the effective decision making. And this involve making all the data that being collected and analyzed and synthesizing into the cohesive solution and addresses the project goals.

InfraWorks is a software developed by Autodesk that provides the tools for designing and visualizing infrastructure projects in the 3D environment. It gives us a possibility to import existing environment data such as a terrain elevation, imagery, land use into the InfraWorks to create more realistic and accurate model of the project area. However, the specific data that available in InfraWorks would depend on this sources and types of the data that we use to create that model. If you have access to InfraWorks, you can explore the available data source and customize options with the software.

In the video, the Toronto City model was created using the data from the various national sources in Canada, with the focus of ensuring the high level of accuracy. Detailed data sources such as a 1 meter grid digital terrain model and street lines were used to create an accurate representation of the terrain and roads. The tree data was also used to reflect the city greenery and the model was [INAUDIBLE] with additional of building and a high resolution orthophoto. Overall, the model is a highly accurate and detailed representation of the city.

The second step, we have discussed about is collect data or emission sources. This involves gathering the information on the amount of the greenhouse gases produced by each emission source, such as an energy use, transportation, and production processes. Since 2015 and signing of the Paris Agreement, Canada adopted 2005 as a base year for its GHG emission reduction target. In 2021, Canada committed to reduce its GHG emission by 45% below 2005 levels by 2023.

The third step was a calculate the emission. This involves converting the data on emission sources into the common unit of measure, typically carbon dioxide equivalents which takes into account the different global warming potentials of different greenhouse gases. Seeing in that model what we are actually created in InfraWorks, not many of you knows that InfraWorks has many built-in analysis tools, for example, mobility analysis, which is used to identify trends and examine issues related to the urban traffic congestions.

Mobility simulation is used to compute computer models to predict and analyze mobility patterns in a given area. These simulations can test the impact of the different transportation policies such as implementing a new public transit systems or expanding bike lanes. Mobility simulation helps to predict future growth and development of the city or region and identify potential transportation bottlenecks or areas of the congestions. Mobility simulation is an important tool for creating efficient, sustainable, and a portable transformation system that meets the needs of all users.

We're able actually to get an average annual daily traffic information, which helps us to calculate the total volume of vehicle traffic of the highway or road for a year divided by 365 days. This number represents the traffic on the typical day of the year. K-Factor allows us to calculate the proportion of this 24 hours daily traffic flow in the hour we want to simulate.

Another video shows how by generating and analyzing different traffic scenarios it sounds like the model was able to provide valuable insights into the traffic patterns and potential issues that could impact the intersection. This kind of analysis can be incredibly useful for city planners as it can help inform decisions related for traffic flow and infrastructure improvements. Additionally, the ability to calculate the carbon footprint of the intersection is an important consideration for the traffic analysis. This information can help identify areas for improvement related to sustainability and can help inform decisions related to public transportation and other infrastructure investments.

Overall, it sounds like the traffic analysis model was a powerful tool that provides a valuable insights into the traffic patterns and carbon footprint of the intersection. These insights can be used to inform decisions making by city planners and other stakeholders and help them to create more efficient, sustainable, and liveable urban environments. With saying that, we can talk about how we report results back.

The carbon footprint results can be reported in the variety of the formats such as a total emission figure, emissions per unit or activity or emission broken down by emission source. In the dashboard, you can see how we can see the different results by the different types of the car has been driving into intersection and back. And also how long actually cars have been driven from the point A to the point B. And all this give you an actually a total number of the carbon emission.

Evidence traffic and mobility analysis tools in InfraWorks were able to generate a carbon footprint for the intersection in Toronto. This is an important consideration for any traffic analysis as it helps identify potential areas for improvement related to sustainability and environmental impact. It's also a good to know that the workflow for generating and visualizing traffic analysis reports is simple, repeatable. This allows for multiple scenarios to be analyzed and compared, which can help stakeholders Make informed decisions about traffic flow and infrastructure improvements.

The ability to upload Power BI dashboards back to InfraWorks or Autodesk Construction Cloud Insights is also valuable. This allows for easy sharing and collaboration among the stakeholders, which can help to ensure that everyone has access to the most up-to-date information.

InfraWorks can be used to create a high-quality visualization in a short amount of time, while also reducing the energy and carbon footprint associated with the repetitive tasks. Information is indeed a powerful tool for creating a 3D environment models. And the ability to export these models as FBX files allow us for easy integration with other software tools. This means that models generated in InfraWorks can be used for a range of purpose, such as VR/AR visualization and gamification.

In that video, the use of twinmotion for visualization is also a very interesting approach as this software allows for a high-quality visualization to be generated quickly and efficiently. By using these tools in combination, It's possible to create stunning visualizations in a short amount of time, which can help to reduce the overall time and energy needed for a project.

Overall, it's exciting to see how these tools can be leveraged to create impactful visualization, while also reducing the carbon footprint of the project. By using efficient workflows and minimizing unnecessary repetitions, it's possible to create a high-quality visualizations in the way that both time efficient and environmentally suitable. Saying that, I would like to give stage back to Justin.

JUSTIN TAYLOR: Thanks, Mantas. Those visuals were truly stunning. I remember spending a lot of time, days or weeks, in the past creating animations on that level. And now we're producing those in minutes to be exact. And the traffic studies, what a powerful level of detail of the emissions that are coming out. But, yeah, now let's take a look at the building side of things.

Let's take a look at operational energy and how we can assess the potential energy requirements of a building. This is pretty simple once we have a Revit model. And we could start with a base massing study and then add on the levels of detail. But, initially, in Revit, we simply set the location.

We go into our energy settings. And we choose if we're doing a massing study, the conceptual type of materials, the amount of glazing we're looking for, the HVAC system. We're just stating these values. If it's a detailed model, it is going to use the materials on the elements that we've assigned, the actual thermal properties of those elements.

We click a button, and we create what is known as an EAM, an Energy Analysis Model. That is pushed up into the cloud. And an energy analysis is generated. And we can then go in and optimize it. So this image is now showing the amount of kilowatt hours per square meter over a year. And the aim is obviously to try and bring this as low as possible.

And we get these little cars that we can play with like the window ratio, the wall, the floor, the roof materials, the daylight occupancy controls, the HVAC system, the lighting efficiency. We can play with all these different factors, reducing this operational energy intensity down as low as we can get it and understanding the trade-offs between the two.

Next, we can take the predicted operational energy. And in Insight, we can combine that and then start to look at things like the embodied carbon in our design. So, again, we want great thermal performance. We want to lower the energy intensity.

So maybe we're putting in a lot of insulation, et cetera, into the building to bring down the energy usage. But what is that doing in terms of the embodied carbon? So what Insight allows us to do is assess both operational and embodied carbon and understand the trade-offs between the two. So we're creating a building analysis digital twin at the moment.

When the building is up and running, we want to look at real-time feedback. So, again, in tools such as Tandem, we can load in the Revit model and other information and attach that to sensors in the building so we understand what the design intent was in terms of the operational energy. But how is the building performing in the real world?

You can see here on these slides we're looking at everything from the CO2, to the light levels, to the temperature in that building. We go back to the design aspects and start to look at the renewables. Again, this is the Toronto office that Mantas and myself have been showing. But, here, we're looking at a study of the solar hours falling onto the building and also the potential photovoltaic payback we could get from solar panels. And this is done inside a Forma.

We can see here we can get the results for different areas of the roof. This gives us a very fast understanding of what the potential is as we are playing around with designs at the planning stage in Forma. We can then push that model into Revit. And using the solar analysis inside of Revit, we can start to get more granular information about different areas of that roof and its payback.

We can take it a step further, and we could download some content. In this case, I downloaded a solar panel from BIM object, loaded it into the model, raid it across the roof. And now we're using the solar analysis to actually ascertain the solar energy that each of those panels can generate, so, again, taking the level of granularity that one step further.

Now, of course, this is design stage. Again, inside of Tandem, that model and the assets can be brought in. We can tie in to an energy monitor in the building. So we're getting real-time feedback from the amount of energy the panels are producing at that time or over a period of time. We can also link things like the operation and maintenance manuals to the panels and the environmental product declarations, et cetera.

What about the microclimate? A lot of companies these days are creating outdoor spaces. And we don't want to be sat outside if it's too hot or too cold. And we certainly don't want the wind blowing the froth off the top of our double ristretto with iced vanilla double shot and organic chocolate brownie decaf coffee, do we? That was a mouthful.

So, again, using tools such as Forma, we can start to understand the outdoor comfort, the microclimate. So we can look at the wind speeds. We can look at the temperature. We can look at the solar radiation, and we can start to build up a picture of where it is going to be comfortable to sit, walk, sit down and eat lunch, or work. Each of these has a different set of parameters that make it comfortable to us.

And if you imagine using this data in combination with the traffic emissions that Mantas showed, could be also don't want to be sipping our chosen beverage while breathing in lots of toxic exhaust fumes throughout the day. So it allows us to position or work out different planting strategies, et cetera so to minimize the effects of traffic, of noise, and to improve temperatures and reduce wind speeds, et cetera.

Another aspect would be something like a natural ventilation digital twin. So many designers are looking to develop means of supplying fresh air into a building via passive forces, typically wind speed and differentials in pressure, et cetera. These systems are complex to understand. They can be expensive because you're looking at automated windows systems to open and close depending on how the building is functioning.

And so you don't want to guess this type of work. We need to understand the detail in this. And so developing a digital twin at the design stage and analyzing the airflow, really, really important. And, again, that's where a combination of Forma for the external wind analysis, the direction of the prevailing winds, et cetera, and then an internal analysis using something like Autodesk CFD to understand the airflow and how it's going to behave is crucial.

Let's look at another aspect of a building twin. And let's turn to the water issue now. This slide shows a simple-- so the same model, but we've got a simple schedule table in here, which has been populated with some formula. And the number of toilets has been based on the number of people that the building is going to support. And there are rules in place around the average number of flushes that each unit will have during an operational day. And we can see what the existing water requirement is against what it would be if we were to use more efficient toilet systems and upgrades.

So if we were looking at doing a retrofit renovation or a retrofit and taking out the old plumbing equipment and putting in new, we can start to understand the difference. And we can see the overall water saving. But is that enough? This is still potable water we're talking about. So could we start to look at things like rainwater harvesting and using a digital twin to understand that?

Well, green roofs are a great way to capture rainwater and also create a microclimate, which is also capable of cooling the air intake by one or two degrees, so, again, reducing overall energy for your HVAC system. But these installations are not cheap, and they often require stronger roof structures to support them, an expense you might have to do if you're retrofitting an old building. They also require the means to store water in catchment reservoirs and then pump it back up into a holding tank in order to be used by the system.

So, again, in Revit, it's fairly simple to do, grab the annual precipitation and do a simple formula that's going to allow us to work out how much rainwater we can harvest over a period of time. Again, a quick search on BIM objects, for example, provides us with a range of green roof options, which you could download and then apply to the building. And that came with information about how much water the roof could absorb and how much could be collected as runoff.

Again, that is put into the schedule table in the formula. And you can see that we're getting an estimated 1,700 plus liters per day averaging. And that is going to supply the toilets with the water for flushing. We know how much we need per day and how much can be met through the rainwater harvesting.

Now some days it's going to rain more than others. And the reservoir is going to get filled up. So another form of digital twin and understanding how to manage the water resource is we're looking at InfraWorks now. And there's a lot of information on this page. But, basically, this is a tool from Autodesk that can be used in combination with Revit and with InfraWorks. And it allows us to understand how much water is being collected and being run off. It allows us to develop a network where this is any overflow from the building's reservoir is going into a catchment pond in the park opposite the building.

So we're creating a natural resource, improving wildlife, improving our microclimate, et cetera and not wasting this water down the drains, and then back into the rivers, et cetera. And this tool allows us to animate and see on a daily basis how that pond is rising or going down based on the different seasons and the different level of rainfall. So we can start to understand exactly how much water we can provide the building and how much can go into things like the ponds for environmental activities in the public area.

Moving on into the operation and maintenance side of things, the building now comes into Tandem. And we can talk about access documentation of the digital twin. So, here, we can see a mechanical unit.

And, again, Tandem will show us all the metadata, the physical and the metadata coming in from Revit. We can classify and add more data. But we can also link multiple documents so they're easily accessible such as the product information, the operation and maintenance manual, the environmental product declaration, how that part needs to be operated and maintained. And how much embodied carbon is it? Can it be recycled at end of use, et cetera?

The next slide. Again, this is inside of Tandem. And this is just a simple graphical filter and going out into a Power BI, which shows us how much of a specific material we have in that building. How much steel, how much aluminum glass is there? What grade is the steel?

How much of it was virgin material from source through the material passports? Can it be recycled? What is the CO2 saving if it is reused? The idea being that we are supporting circularity in the reuse of the materials and the assets in our buildings instead of them going to landfill.

So in summary, what myself and my colleague Mantas have hopefully shown you is that digital twins, digital building logbooks are pivotal tools for achieving sustainability objectives by enhancing resource efficiency, reducing energy consumption, prolonging the lifespan of assets, enabling informed decision making throughout a building and the infrastructure's lifecycle. They play a vital role in advancing sustainability efforts and design, construction, facility management, and ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally responsible future. And with that, we say thank you for listening. And we're going to leave you with a few more AU sustainability sessions that you can watch online post this event. Thank you.