Data driven economic scenarios for retrofitting residential buildings in a northern Italian region

European directives and strategies, such as the 'European Green Deal' and the 'Ren- ovation Wave', point out the importance of the building sector in achieving the climate goals set by the European Union for 2050. However, a higher renovation rate for the existing buildings is required to achieve these goals. Many barriers prevent the renovation rate from growing. Regarding financial barriers, the long payback times of renovation interventions and the high risk perceived by the potential investors make the renovation rate remain low. Based on data from energy performance certificates, this research proposes a data-driven method to create economic retrofit scenarios for residential buildings using Artificial Intelligence techniques and Monte Carlo simulations. Namely, energy savings have been predicted using an Artificial Neural Network on clusters of residential buildings and the Life Cycle Costs forecasted by Monte Carlo simulations taking into account the uncertainty in many of the inputs. Results obtained by applying the method to a region in northern Italy illustrate two scenarios for the energy retrofit of the built environment, one assuming a payback time of fifteen years and the other of twenty- five years. In both cases, the maximum allowable investment, which varies according to the specific characteristics of the buildings, is much lower than the retrofit costs recorded in the same area in recent years

Gaining knowledge from big data: energy performance certificate as a source of information to decarbonize the built environment

The decarbonization strategies for the built environment that policy-makers face today from the EU mandate risk being made with incomplete or insufficient information. The consequence of this could be ineffective choices, thus slowing down the ongoing ecological transition, or their high cost, whether borne by the state or citizens. The progressive and unstoppable digitization of the built environment offers information collection and previously unthinkable management opportunities. The construction sector, traditionally lagging behind other industrial sectors, is beginning to produce large quantities of data that can be exploited thanks to the most modern techniques derived from the information technology sector. Among the most promising data sources are energy performance certificates for buildings, which provide a snapshot of the characteristics of buildings, their fabric and plant components, and design forecasts of their energy performances. Analyzing the energy performance certificates through Artificial Intelligence techniques proves the effectiveness of using big data in the construction sector. In particular, in this study, unsupervised machine learning techniques led to an in-depth knowledge of a stock of buildings approaching two hundred thousand units distributed over an almost twenty-four thousand square kilometers area in northern Italy

Artificial intelligence in construction asset management: a review of present status, challenges and future opportunities

The built environment is responsible for roughly 40% of global greenhouse emissions, making the sector a crucial factor for climate change and sustainability. Meanwhile, other sectors (like manufacturing) adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve complex, non-linear problems to reduce waste, inefficiency, and pollution. Therefore, many research efforts in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction community have recently tried introducing AI into building asset management (AM) processes. Since AM encompasses a broad set of disciplines, an overview of several AI applications, current research gaps, and trends is needed. In this context, this study conducted the first state-of-the-art research on AI for building asset management. A total of 578 papers were analyzed with bibliometric tools to identify prominent institutions, topics, and journals. The quantitative analysis helped determine the most researched areas of AM and which AI techniques are applied. The areas were furtherly investigated by reading in-depth the 83 most relevant studies selected by screening the articles’ abstracts identified in the bibliometric analysis. The results reveal many applications for Energy Management, Condition assessment, Risk management, and Project management areas. Finally, the literature review identified three main trends that can be a reference point for future studies made by practitioners or researchers: Digital Twin, Generative Adversarial Networks (with synthetic images) for data augmentation, and Deep Reinforcement Learning

Streamlined management of the built environment: the district and the building logbook as risk prevention tools

Management of information related to the real properties is a key topic both in private and public sector. In the Italian context, can be spotted an overall lack of organisation of the information concerning the real estate assets, from the building scale, to the neighbourhood, until the city and the territory. Moreover, management of the urban environment is characterised by the presence of different players asking for common needs in management and use of data. This research aims at proposing the Building Logbook and the District Logbook as tools for collection, organisation and management of information, in a perspective of streamlined real estate management process. Moreover, the Logbooks can be conceived as tools for risk management. They should be exploited especially in technical management phase of assets, as well as in the verification of compliance with laws, authorisations and licenses, since these issues often bear to disputes between public and private players. Often disputes concern that areas where the competences and responsibilities among different players are not clear (connections to system, property boundaries, licenses, occupation of public land etc.). In this situations, information management assumes a key role, since it could be a powerful mean to clarify responsibilities among players. Therefore, the scope of the research concerns the investigation on the relationships and related information flows among stakeholders in the real estate field. Altogether, it can be stated that the logbooks can streamline processes in the use phase of assets, despite they could be intended as rigid control tools. Through this paper these issues will deepened and clarified. The paper concludes with some considerations concerning the possible integration of the Logbooks in a digital environment, following the BIM approach

Dynamic Facility Condition Index calculation for asset management

Aim of this research is to investigate the possibility of dynamically computing the Facility Condition Index (FCI) using a database of maintenance operations and costs of fabric and services components. This would lead to an instrument able to support decision making during asset and portfolio management because FCI is widely considered a good indicator for monitoring assets and portfolios conditions; so being able to efficiently calculate and update it is fundamental for a proper asset management. There are many ways to benchmark assets condition, but most of them are qualitative and lead to ratings in percentage, that need to be further elaborated to be connected to annual OM&R costs. The FCI can be considered an economic rating, based on money paid for maintenance, repair and replacement performed over the current asset value. The objective is to make an appraisal of the maintenance costs in a dynamic way, so to be able to examine multiple scenarios and make forecasts; the facility value comes from market appraisals with some coefficient applied, if need be. This calculation procedure, together with a maintenance operations and costs database developed by the authors (either forecasted or real costs), can be used by asset managers to support decisions about maintenance and repair actions to be undertaken. This paper shows preliminary results of this research, with the help of a case study. Further correlations should be investigated, even if this calculation procedure leads to an effective management. The calculation procedure and the database organization are an original work of the authors, as well as the case study used to show the results. In addition to this, connections among the indicators provided and BIM (Building Information Modelling) models are analyzed

The maintenance paradox

This research will spot main features of servitization in real estate, placing main emphasis to current and future development of the trend. In manufacturing the servitization process has already been studied since the late 1980’s, whereas in real estate is a phenomenon not yet been clearly defined yet. Despite being a market characterised by low speed innovation, currently some changings in management of the built environment can be noticed: with new business models and financing structures, a shifting from a product-oriented market to a service-oriented one can be spotted. Therefore, through this research will be investigated the servitization process, with regard to maintenance management, no longer conceived as an optional non-core activity, after the transaction of the asset, but as part of the services included in the purchasing of the building and its facilities. Accordingly, the building is conceived more and more as a complex tangible and intangible entity, not only characterised by its production and location value, but also by its capability to offer provide users with a wide array of services to users. Thus, after a phase featured by the willingness to acquire legitimacy in the building process by the maintenance operators, we are witnessing to the maintenance paradox: the servitization of business model in real estate, leading to performing “the maintenance without maintenance”. The paper concludes with some considerations on future developments of the research and trends in the real estate marke

A Multi-criteria Framework for Decision Process in Retrofit Optioneering through Interactive Data Flow

Aim of this research is to deliver a system of procedures and instruments that allows comparing different scenarios of restoration and retrofit of existing buildings applicable each time a relevant decision about the asset has to be made. The system developed takes advantages of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), thus to focus on main clients’ needs. Decisions about real estate assets are frequently made by managers with incomplete and scattered data, not sufficient to fully support the decision making process. Using a BIM model as a central repository of information could strongly support to compare objectively different scenarios and consequently to decide the application of a multi-criteria matrix involving management, energy, economic and social issues. BIM and BEM (Building Energy Modelling) techniques have a wide potential and analysis capabilities; however, they are often adopted without an integrated framework, causing missing performances and costs overrun. The result is a system enabling to analyze the asset, to produce BIM and BEM models ready to include life cycle data, to evaluate feasible alternatives and scenarios and to extract relevant performance indicators for decision makers’ support. An existing office building in Milan representing an awkward field for intervention is the case study for the system application. While the tools and software adopted are commonly used, the system of procedures developed by the authors can be considered as an ensemble of workflows otherwise typically used independently. Using them together enhance the decision process providing data on which to set up a strategic plan of the refurbishment considering costs, continuity in occupancy and energy efficiency

A New Building Information Modelling-Based Approach to Automate Recyclability Rate Calculations for Buildings

To address environmental challenges, the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industry, which is known for its high resource consumption and waste production, needs to switch to a circular economy (CE). This approach focuses on reducing, recycling, and reusing materials to narrow, slow, and close material loops. However, one of the main problems which the AECO industry is still facing is the lack of common, standardized, and automated procedures to consider the recyclability and presence of hazardous materials. To address this problem, this study focuses on extending the recyclability rate from the material to building scale, considering the presence of hazardous materials based on the European Waste Catalogue (EWC), hence defining a new KPI. It adopts Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) and integrates them with bespoke programming in Python to develop a standardized and automated procedure that complies with Italian regulations. The new KPI will help clients and designers to rate the overall recyclability of a building and to choose the best combination of materials and components. The procedure includes data acquisition, transmission, and data/model integration, resulting in practical and trackable measures that could be globally scalable. Scenario analyses are also developed to consider the impact of maintenance attitude on waste production

Guías propias de BIM para la gestión de portfolio

BIM is blooming in many Countries but in most of them it is unclear how its adoption can be governed and by whom. The BIM-market is increasing every day, with plenty of training courses and software, but there still is a great lack of guidelines and procedures to take clients (owners and users) through the risky path of BIM adoption. This paper aims to show main results of a case study research carried out by the authors for a public Italian client: development of guidelines, procedures, BIM objects and templates to be used for managing an asset portfolio. The proprietary guidelines developed are meant to solve problems related to e.g. missing and not updated data, loss of subcontractors’ control and inaccurate quantity take-offs. Starting from a clear definition of roles and activities to be done, the research focused on the steps to be taken to write some comprehensive guidelines that deal with new construction, existing buildings and maintenance. The results of the research will guide the public client in his transition from traditional to BIM-based procedures. Examples are provided in this paper aim at exemplifying the use of the proprietary guidelines; the case study presented in this paper is the RAI (Italian public broadcaster) settlement of Bologna, composed by a set of four buildings used for several activities.BIM se está desarrollando en muchos países, pero en su mayoría no es claro cómo y quién debería gestionar su adaptación. El mercado de BIM crece cada día, con un número significativo de cursos de formación y software disponibles, pero aún hace falta definir directrices y procedimientos que permitan orientar a clientes (propietarios e usuarios) a través del complejo proceso de adopción de BIM. Este trabajo pretende mostrar los principales resultados de una investigación realizada por los autores en un caso de estudio para un cliente público italiano que comprende: elaboración de guías, procedimientos, objetos BIM y plantillas para la gestión de una cartera de activos. Las directrices desarrolladas están destinadas a resolver problemas como, por ejemplo, datos faltantes o desactualizados, pérdida de control por parte de los subcontratistas y calculo inexacto de cantidades. Partiendo de una clara definición de los roles y las actividades a realizar, la investigación se concentró en los pasos a seguir para redactar directrices comprensibles dedicadas a construcciones nuevas, edificaciones existentes y al mantenimiento de las mismas. Los resultados de la investigación guiarán al cliente público en su transición desde procedimientos tradicionales a procedimientos basados en BIM. En este documento, se proveen ejemplos con la intención de ejemplificar el uso de directrices específicas, el caso de estudio presentado en este artículo es el asentamiento de la RAI (Emisora pública italiana) en Bologna (Italia), compuesto por el conjunto de cuatro edificaciones utilizados para diferentes propósitos

La piattaforma digitale nazionale INNOVance a supporto della filiera delle costruzioni

Il primo volume della collana presenta il quadro generale, evidenziando gli strumenti messi a punto e integrati in INNOVance e mostrando come questi siano indispensabili per traguardare fattivamente la transizione al digitale del settore delle costruzioni. Dopo un’introduzione di carattere generale, vengono descritti il sistema di classificazione e co- difica definiti per poter identificare in modo univoco i diversi oggetti contenuti nella banca dati, dai prodotti della costruzione sino alle opere, passando attraverso livelli di comples- sità tecnologica, ovvero gli elementi in opera, i sistemi assemblati, i sistemi tecnologici co- struttivi e impiantistici, nonché quelli spaziali e quelli relativi alla gestione dei processi, ovvero le attività, con le risorse umane e i mezzi d’opera necessari per svilupparle.In secondo luogo si riportano le schede tecniche digitali che rappresentano la struttura della Banca Dati INNOVANCE, e in particolare in questo volume quelle relative ai livelli di più elevata complessità tecnologica, come quelle relative all’opera in quanto tale e al si- stema funzionale-spaziale. A seguire si presenta la Banca Dati INNOVance e quindi il portale, con i suoi contenuti, ov- vero la BIM Library, il BIM server e gli strumenti utili per la gestione delle gare indispen- sabili per poter affrontare le nuove frontiere del digitale secondo quanto previsto dal nuo- vo Codice degli Appalti in una prospettiva rivolta a Industria 4.0, oltre che naturalmente le funzionalità relative alla profilazione degli utenti e alla gestione degli oggetti contenuti nella Banca Dati. Per concludere il volume riporta in sintesi gli sviluppi della Banca Dati INNOVance in merito all’interoperabilità potenzialmente verso qualsiasi tipo di software e la sua applicazione agli aspetti di efficienza energetica, nonché le ricadute sulla normativa in primo luogo na- zionale nelle diverse parti delle norme UNI 11337 “Gestione digitale dei processi informa- tivi delle costruzioni”, utili anche per poter dare un contributo nazionale alle norme in- ternazionali in fase di sviluppo nei gruppi di lavoro ISO TC 59 SC 13 “Organization of infor- mation about construction works” e CEN TC 442 Building Information Modelling (BIM)