Practical digital twins for smart housing and decarbonisation

Digital twins are in today’s practice used at various context levels. It can be presented in many forms but commonly we do expect somewhat graphical representation that at least mimics the real construction entity throughout the chosen use case. Use cases are different and as such the information context that is needed extends from one end to the other at different levels of detail as well as with certain precision requirements. All that needs a well-planned level of information need activities. This course focuses on the level of information need developments that covers the example use cases of smart housing and decarbonisation. This will be defined through structured information requirements that is attached onto digital model in where certain modelling workflows are explained. Given workflows can be extended for other digital twin examples.

Aims of the e-course
Structured information is a key requirement to enable smooth data workflows from real life to a digital replica (digital twin). This course explains how structured information workflows help to achieve meaningful (standardized) data extractions in a way that can be more easily reused for various types of follow-up analysis. Course starts with the basics of information management key principles which are then followed by defining the level of information need (what information we really need) and thereafter describing the use case (what for we define our information need). Depending on those key questions we then select the construction classification system to build up structured information workflows that follow international information structuring principles. We draw examples of how predefined construction classification classes give meaningful context for our digital twins. Having the structured information workflows in place, it is a lot easier to carry out any kind of information related tasks. Smart housing and decarbonization are good examples for digital twin workflows. On one hand, smart housing can be seen as an example, in where we focus onto construction element itself and how it forms systems to be managed or connected to other IT systems through a reference designation system. On the other hand, decarbonization can be seen as an example, how to divide the construction entity into elements, sub-elements (like materials) which plays important role to get structured information extractions (like quantities) which is the part for successful decarbonization analysis. Having structured information workflows in place, any other type of analysis can follow the same path as set out in the following course.