Once the levels and parameters to be correlated had been defined, the next step was to create a database of case studies. Based on the case studies created and their evaluation, the machine was trained to evaluate general indoor health, taking into account the previously defined environmental, architectural, and shape parameters.

#### **17.3 Results**

Once the four models were trained on the data, we tested their validity by means of test data. From the statistical analysis of the results, it can be seen that convolutional neural networks are the ones that work best (Figs. 17.3, 17.4, 17.5 and 17.6).

**Fig. 17.3** Comparison of the perfect prediction with the linear regression model

**Fig. 17.4** Comparison of the perfect prediction with the nearest neighbors model

**Fig. 17.5** Comparison of the perfect prediction with the convolutional neural network model

**Fig. 17.6** Comparison of the perfect prediction with the random forest model

This result is somewhat unexpected because convolutional neural networks are very efficient for the recognition of images or in general of data arranged on a grid. The high level of correlation of the variables and their inhomogeneity has a correspondence with the distant characteristics of the images, such as the nature of the edges of a figure and its color.

The algorithm obtained is able to provide a habitability index as a function of the chosen variables. This means that, connected to environmental indicators, it provides a single number that could be visible on the "dashboard" of an apartment to inform the inhabitants of the level of domestic pollution. This instrument does not prescribe the actions to be taken, but, like a sort of speedometer, it informs people of the environmental situation, increasing their awareness, and the possibility of interventions. The algorithm can continue to learn as the available data increase, thus improving its reliability. Finally, the AI system can communicate with similar systems in the neighboring apartments, increasing its efficiency, and creating a global environmental map.

#### **17.4 Conclusions**

The described tool simulates a sort of awareness on the home governance, so that people can act in a specific way knowing that each choice has an impact in terms of environmental footprint. The predictor increases the precision of the calculations and the accuracy of the results as the number of cases analyzed increases.

In order to develop a more effective tool, it would be advisable to build a dataset based on measures related to more effective situations where all parameters are known. The final assessment should be carried out by a pool of experts on different topics, so that the conditions can be studied not only from an architectural and urban planning point of view, but also from a health and psychological point of view. In addition, the configurations studied can be labeled starting from the diseases that affect the residents. The creation of an effective predictor would make this possible:

The system's output is a dashboard, a sort of digital-control panel which allows the users to follow in real time the parameters related to their own consumption of energy and resources, through the connection with devices such as smartphones, tablets, and PCs. The overall ecological footprint is measured based on energy, environmental, water waste, and food "cycles."

The system uses IoT technology and processes the data collected by the sensors with artificial intelligence and provides a global assessment of the state of the house (a number), from which partial assessments and suggestions for better and more virtuous behavior can be derived. The final goal of such a system is to be connected with similar system to create a network of real-time information about the ecology of the indoor habitat.

The resulting tool does not deal with automation technologies to control the indoor spaces' comfort, but addresses tools able to make choices that allow occupants and information systems to learn together. The fine-tuning of these tools is enabled by the availability of parametric modeling software, jointly with opportunity to develop artificial intelligence models to calculate the connection among variables.

The development of devices to convert the large, heterogeneous, and variable amounts of data into information enables the development of a resilient and adaptable planning methodology based on the complex interactions between structural and technological systems, between spaces and functions, between social and economic factors. The machine learning system combines this data with indoor data from various sensors that calculate consumption, environmental parameters, and the behavior of people in each unit.

The final aim is to create a conscious "energy citizenship" living in energy-efficient buildings. Energy and functional issues were, and remain, one of the driving factors for sustainable strategic development, and the strength of the smart approach lies in its ability to promote a holistic vision. The measures related to single units can be applied to a wider network in order to create smart districts and smart cities, involving dwellers in a serious game on their homes' performance. The European Framework Program identified Smart Cities as one of the answers to the energy and environmental problems highlighted by the Strategic Energy Technology Plan.

#### **References**

Bourdieu P (1980) Le Sens pratique. Les edition de minuit

Goodfellow I, Bengio Y, Courville A (2016) Deep learning. Google Books

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 18 A Prosumer Approach for Feeding the Digital Twin. Testing the MUST Application in the Old Harbour Waterfront of Genoa**

#### **Serena Viola, Antonio Novellino, Alberto Zinno, and Marco Di Ludovico**

**Abstract** Supporting the settlement systems' life cycle management through synchronisation of the real world with a virtual platform constitutes the horizon for the MUST team research (Maintenance Urban Sharing Tools) with the Departments of Architecture (DiARC) and Structures for engineering and architecture (DiSt) of the University of Naples, Stress Scarl and ETT SpA. Living digital simulation models are based on information analysis and constant data supply. The research identifies the involvement of the settlement systems users through creating collaborative information flows, one of the driving factors of the digital revolution. The paper introduces the connotative aspects of the MUST application (Smau Innovation Award 2019, Campania Start-Up 2020 funded project) to identify the building and urban system loss of functionality. With the support of an experiment conducted in the waterfront area of the old harbour of Genoa, the paper identifies strengths and weaknesses in using the MUST application to support and streamline the Digital Twin that ETT S.p.A. is implementing with the DSH2030 (Digital Sustainable Harbor 2030) project. A prosumer perspective is the foundation of this research focusing on the sense of responsibility of communities towards the built environment and on the willingness of individuals to invest in care actions. The paper returns the research results achieved to date with an open and public model design, equipped with different interfaces to meet the diverse needs of the groups involved, allowing expert citizens to interact and report in progress feedback.

S. Viola · M. Di Ludovico University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. Di Ludovico e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
A. Novellino (B) ETT SpA, Genoa, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
A. Zinno Stress Scarl, Naples, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>**Keywords** Digital Twin · Urban maintenance · Citizens · Sensors

#### **18.1 Introduction**

The Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing renew systems and process in several production sectors, from manufacturing to aerospace, impacting design, production and maintenance (Tao et al. 2019). In the building sector, the digital transition, although an essential choice for urban governance, is prolonged due to the built systems complexities, stakeholders' diversity and construction technologies' evolution. However, scholars admit that digitalisation applied to maintenance and management could significantly improve built environments' qualities and companies' business.

The contribution resumes the studies that started with the development of MUST, Maintenance Urban Sharing Tool (already registered at SIAE with progress number D000014807), a digital application designed to involve citizens in buildings' life cycle extension.

Potentialities and gaps of Digital Twins (DTs) applications for urban maintenance are the entry point of this paper. It outlines the feasibility of synchronisation scenarios between the real world and a virtual model, extending the data acquisition process to dynamic and conscious sensors.

DTs support managers and technicians in decision-making approaches on digital clones of physical assets by simulating adaptive scenarios in response to incoming data from real-time operations.

Developed as integrated multi-physics, multi-scale, probabilistic simulations, DTs use the best available physical models and sensors to mirror the life of their real twins (Glaessgen and Stargel 2012).

In a scenario marked by collaborative approaches to the built environment management (The Council of Europe Secretariat in Consultation with the Faro Convention Network (FCN) Members 2018), extending the data acquisition process to citizens' involvement in faults detection is the research hypothesis discussed for a proof-of-concept DT under development in the old harbour waterfront Genoa. The achieved results can be traced back to the definition of renewal coordinates in urban maintenance and DT's functionality extension with data output from MUST.

#### **18.2 Digital Transition for Urban Maintenance**

Identifying the built environment as a complex system is an underlying hypothesis for the first studies on maintenance methods and procedures at an urban scale (Ciribini 1986). Since the 90s, with the first British Standards, the scientific community worked for the involvement of administrators, companies and users within a technical, cultural and social process able to manage the stratified and interconnected layers connoting the built environment. Over thirty years, maintenance emerged as an iterative strategy based on archived data, forecasts and inspections aimed at conserving and realigning the performances provided by a building asset within acceptable values, contrasting failure and obsolescence processes (UNI 11257 2007).

An expansion of perspectives, witnessed today by the UNI 13306: 2010 and 10147: 2013 standards (UNI EN 13306 2010; UNI 10147 2013), is recorded with maintenance defined as a complex activity carried out by organisations capable of integrating structured information, technical know-how, strategic and managerial skills and to guarantee, over time, a quality condition (Hauashdh et al. 2022).

The concept of *service* informs the approach implemented in the last decade (Ferreira et al. 2021), helping to trace the cultural coordinates of several experiences in the field, united by the commitment to (1) raise the maintenance procedure to a planned activity, legitimately and definitively included in the project; (2) define the design, executive and inspection techniques to minimise costs; (3) bring communities back into the care and custody process.

The concept of DT introduced by Grieves (2002), with the Conceptual Ideal for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) as the digital representation of a physical asset and the automatic connections that bind them together (Grieves and Vickers 2017), opens up new scenarios for maintenance planning in the construction sectors. DT is "An integrated multi-physics, multi-scale, probabilistic simulation of a vehicle or system that uses the best available physical models, sensor updates, fleet history and so forth, to mirror the life of its flying twin" (Glaessgen and Stargel 2012).

Despite several projects carried out in the construction sector to develop DTs during the design and execution phases, problems still emerge when the smart city scenario refers to the already built environment (Bujari et al. 2021). Main difficulties can be attributed to: (a) complexity of elements constituting the physical space that should be reported in the virtual product; (b) quality and quantity of data sources that feed the model; (c) communication flows between them. Only a few experiences (Wray 2020) demonstrate the effective convergence between urban maintenance and DTs, showing the improvements that DTs could bring to the maintenance plan (Deng et al. 2021).

DTs are expected to support policymakers and professional practitioners at the urban scale, controlling spaces' and elements' behaviours compared to users' needs and foreseeing performance maintenance through the life cycle (Zheng et al. 2020). According to McKinsey (2015), DTs in urban care processes will provide up to USD 630 billion in potential savings in the construction market in 2025. In this perspective, DTs should have a predictive attitude to evaluate real systems' current and subsequent states and predict failures McKinsey (Tjønn 2019). Furthermore, this prediction improves when the DTs include more information about the physical features, the ongoing process or the operation's characteristics (Errandonea et al. 2020).

Sensors and devices for real-time data acquisition are fundamental for feeding the DTs. Their development has been fostered by the awareness of the economic benefits; these technologies can bring to the building process. An indispensable prerequisite is progress monitoring, which provides wide-ranging information on faults, relating each failure to a system of triggering causes (Olivotti et al. 2019).

Research on DTs in the urban maintenance field collides with technological difficulties in acquiring and transferring data from the real system to the virtual model. The most significant problems are related to various sources' interaction in the information process, such as asset data, operational data, historical maintenance activities and information on constructive transformations, which are decisive for assets' users and managers. Recursive data directly acquired or synthetically generated through simulation are fundamental for DTs that include information on how the performance provided improves after maintenance activities.

#### **18.3 Methods and Materials**

The paper resumes and develops further the results already achieved within the project metrics (2013–2017) managed by the Regional High Technology District for Sustainable Buildings, Stress.

The methodology is based on a mixed deductive and inductive approach that integrates the literature review results with a critical analysis of the impacts on urban maintenance reachable through adopting a DT fed by data from the MUST application.

Initially conceived for reporting faults that affect the buildings' functionality, MUST has been developed by an interdisciplinary research team, with the collaboration between architects experts in building maintenance (DiARC), structural engineers (DiSt), computer scientists (ETT) and researchers from the Regional District Stress.

Smau Innovation Award in 2019, as an Italian Excellence Model of Innovation for Companies and Public Administrations, MUST was awarded by the Regione Campania Start-Up 2020. Since 2021, this grant supports the transfer to market process. Within this funding, the Working Group prefigures an open and public model, equipped with different interfaces to meet the diverse needs of the groups involved, allowing citizens to interact and report progress feedback.

The MUST application supports the maintenance process by two main service modules: a mobile application and a web GIS-based dashboard. The mobile application is developed for iOS and android smartphones (available on the marketplaces). Once the user is registered, he can take a snap of the area; the picture is AI processed to provide the user with the best matching label to tag the identified issue. Then, the user can add further notes and submit the notification. The mobile app interoperates with cloud infrastructure (Google Firebase). A web application provides the facility manager with an intuitive dashboard to list, prioritise and supervise the maintenance interventions workflow (Fig. 18.1).

The web dashboard includes a synoptical geo-referred view of the notifications and the possibility to elaborate reports and analytics (space, time, type of issue, etc.). With the support of MUST, the research explores incremental innovation scenarios

**Fig. 18.1** From the mobile app to the facility manager dashboard workflow. Authors elaboration

in the urban maintenance sector, referring the potentialities and gaps analysis to the applied research project Digital and Sustainable Harbor 2030 (DSH 2030—https:// www.digitalsustainableharbour.it/), funded by the POR FESR LIGURIA.

### **18.4 Results and Discussion**

The literature review referred to urban maintenance and DTs development returns a framework of studies in constant evolution (Bibri and Krogstie 2021). Focusing on the transition processes towards smart cities and the impacts of enabling technologies, the results can be traced back to the following three research areas:

	- very demanding on a theoretical level because they are based on technical skills and analytical skills;
	- not very evident on the executive level because they do not require sophisticated technical skills;
	- not significant on the media level, not very attractive and exciting.

buildings users, real estate managers, condominium administrators, technicians and the whole community. Hence, adopting sensors capable of monitoring the state conditions of urban systems is a central issue of many studies (UNI EN 13306 2010; UNI 10147 2013).

3. inspection activities with preventive effectiveness. The literature review provides a framework of studies to reorganise the management coordination for urban services. Reactivating the symbiosis between built assets and communities (The Council of Europe Secretariat in Consultation with the Faro Convention Network (FCN) Members 2018) becomes a horizontal challenge for quality preservation and transmission. An expanded awareness about the need to share responsibilities towards built assets through values matured in contexts and handed down over time profoundly emerges from the analysis of documents produced by international organisations and scholars. A call to engagement and empowerment renews the action of expert knowledge and communities.

According to point 1, urban spatial areas can be assumed as the reference context where the interaction between DT and MUST could successfully work. Within each spatial area, the object of observation is the aggregated maintenance set, identified for an organisational and economic optimisation of the maintenance practice (UNI 11257 2007). The aggregation aims to synthesise and optimise the framework of knowledge, compare the characterisation of the technical elements and the planned activities, relate them to the worksite of the urban space and seek in the latter unexpressed potential and constraints.

According to point 2, a prosumer perspective, crasis of the terms producer and consumer is at the basis of the idea of feeding the DSH 2030 DT with data acquired by users via mobile phones, adopting the MUST application to power the communication between real space and the virtual model.

The adoption of a data flow coming from MUST is subjected to the functioning of the DT, which must be able:

Three groups of stakeholders participate in the interaction between DT and MUST:

A gradual knowledge strategy is supposed to support citizens in recognising the failure processes of sub-systems and technical components. The occurrence of events capable of affecting the real system identity is anticipated by signals that return in the virtual model, with indications offered by users about the process's extent and consequences. In addition, a database of the states according to which the failure event

**Fig. 18.2** A prosumer approach for feeding the DT for urban maintenance. Data flow schematic drawing by ETT. Authors elaboration

can evolve supports the user's involvement in recognising significant conditions to prevent the onset of situations that will lead to the "cessation of the ability of an entity to perform the required function" (UNI 10147 2013).

According to point 3, the predictive and decision-making processes are reconfigured due to the synchronising between real space and virtual models with aware sensors.

The critical analysis of the impacts that a DT fed with data from the MUST application can exert on urban maintenance (Fig. 18.2) outlines:

	- a. increasing the quality of the settlement system;
	- b. facilitating the relationship between stakeholders;
	- c. reducing times and costs, simplifying methods, promoting the predictive maintenance approach.
	- a. be the most realistic representation of a physical asset, incorporating models and available information;
	- b. contain all process information and acquire operational, organisational and technical knowledge;

Positive organisational consequences of the integration between DT and MUST can be traced back to the DT attitudes to:

#### **18.5 Conclusions**

Assuming the built environment as a complex, dynamic and adaptive system, the research prefigures an incremental innovation scenario, with digitisation renewing the management services for the maintenance sets through synergies between stakeholders.

A theoretical framework has been traced in the international context considering organisations, municipalities and scholars' commitment to urban maintenance. DTs have been defined as models of physical assets in operation that could be applied to design a more effective preventive maintenance strategy.

Focusing on proof-of-concept DT under development in the ancient port of Genoa, the research hypothesis is to integrate the data flow with a set of information provided by citizens adopting the application MUST. Accuracy, functionality and integrability have been outlined as the requirements for a DT to support managers and technicians with remote control, predictive decision-making approaches and adaptive scenarios.

Extending the life cycle of buildings is a MUST for the community, to which research responds with the expanded sharing of monitoring, updating and programming processes.

#### **References**

Bibri SE, Krogstie J (2021) A novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future: a strategic roadmap to transformational change in the era of big data. Future Cities Environ 7(1):3. https://doi.org/10.5334/fce.116

Bujari A, Calvio A, Foschini L, Sabbioni A, Corradi A (2021) A digital twin decision support system for the urban facility management process. Sensors 21:8460. https://doi.org/10.3390/ s21248460

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 19 Untapping the Potential of the Digital Towards the Green Imperative: The Interdisciplinary BeXLab Experience**

#### **Gisella Calcagno, Antonella Trombadore, Giacomo Pierucci, and Lucia Montoni**

**Abstract** The paper shares the experience of the building environmental eXperience Laboratory (beXLab) at the DIDA Department of Architecture-University of Florence, an interdisciplinary and open research group working on the experimentation of transferable methodological approaches and practical tools to support the challenging twin transitions, the green and the digital, starting from pivotal public buildings. As prototypical university Living Lab (born in the frame of the Med-EcoSuRe project, from here LL), beXLab is a shared space where researchers (architects, technical physicians, energy and information engineers, user experience designers, etc…) are experimenting integrated and innovative retrofit solutions, by involving key actors (decision makers, technical offices, energy managers), stakeholders (technicians, companies) and end-users (students, univerisity community). The LL place and space in the pilot university building of Santa Verdiana (in the UNESCO World Heritage Centre of Florence) was equipped with a bulk of IoT sensors for the monitoring of real-time environmental parameters and used as a test room for innovative retrofit/refurbishment and advanced technologies application, as well as to capture and valorise the users' experience. The beXLab physical space is coupled with a BIM model, as a base for the development of a Digital Twin intended to construct a reliable and shareable image of reality (i.e. energy performances and indoor comfort/well-being assessment) and forecast trustable future scenarios (i.e. simulations towards participative design processes). Our present research, based on a crucial interdisciplinary approach and focusing on the energy-economic-socialcultural implications in the Mediterranean areas, proposes a new way of imagining and representing a sustainable, healthy and green future for buildings and urban

G. Calcagno (B) · A. Trombadore · G. Pierucci · L. Montoni

Department of Architecture, University of Florence, Florence, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
A. Trombadore e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
G. Pierucci e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
L. Montoni e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>builtup areas, in compliance with the EU Green Deal, the Renovation Wave and the New EU Bauhaus initiative.

**Keywords** Digital Twin · User experience and awareness · Energy-environmental quality · Monitoring systems · Retrofit strategies

#### **19.1 Introduction**

Living in the current built environment is highly impacting both the planet and its inhabitants. Buildings are big consumers of resources and energy, often unable to guarantee minimum environmental quality, and sometimes they badly influence the comfort and well-being of the occupants. If the need to reduce the environmental impacts of buildings is well-known since the energy crisis in the 70s, with the ecology principles entering in the AEC field, this reduction is still an ongoing effort in the climate change era.

Since green challenges in the building sector are as much urgent as complex, digital opportunities can be exploited to manage the building life cycle in a more efficient way, addressing more reliable building processes by supporting a more informed decision-making towards sustainability.

According to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), future buildings should rely exclusively on Clean Energy, imperative to contrast climate change, and guarantee Health and Well-being for All in Sustainable Communities and Cities. Foreseeing zero climate impact by 2050, the ambitious EU Green Deal is both a call to update existing buildings in the Renovation Wave strategy and to digitalise the building sector. Moreover, the New European Bauhaus initiative invites to re-think planning and design practices towards creativity and interdisciplinarity, as a basis to envision sustainable, inclusive but also beautiful places.

Notwithstanding both the green and the digital domain have informed AEC research and design practice since decades, the parallel green/digital transition is still moving the first steps, requiring an enlarged interdisciplinary space where digitalisation can support the construction of future sustainable buildings and cities.

#### **19.2 Experimenting Digital Twins for Building Energy Retrofits**

In the context of the green and digital transition, Digital Twins represent the most advanced concept, with the possibility to twin/synchronise existing buildings with digital models by adopting real-virtual data bridges, such as sensors and IoTs (Trombadore et al. 2020). It is easy to capture the potential of such synchronisation, with real-time data deepening the comprehension of buildings for a more appropriate decision-making along the entire life cycle. This appears particularly profitable for the purpose of renovating existing buildings, when the availability of a new amount of reliable digital data can be strategic not only to analyse the existing conditions, but also to predict retrofit scenarios and to drive a more sustainable future use, management and functioning of the public building.

Within the Med-EcoSuRe project (Mediterranean Universities as catalyst of Eco-Sustainable Renovation), the DIDA Department of Architecture of the University of Florence founded beXLab (*building environmental eXperience Laboratory*), a Living Lab (LL) in the university building site of the retrofit pilot project (Fig. 19.1). Here, the experimentation with Digital Twin is intended both to collectively construct a reliable and shareable image of the existing and to forecast trustable future scenarios (Trombadore and Calcagno 2022).

beXLab systematises interdisciplinary competencies and methodologies to innovate the renovation of public buildings, by the means of Digital Twins, especially valorising passive solutions that impact on energy performance and human comfort/wellbeing.

The idea of the LL was born in the field of technology of architecture, and it has immediately involved energy engineering for the common effort to find technological solutions for zero/positive-energy buildings. The LL experience in the university public building under renovation allows to constantly get the pulse on the real challenges, to engage strategic actors involved (decision makers, stakeholders and users),

**Fig. 19.1** Picture of the beXLab inside

and to take advantage from the local academic community. Working on process innovation to renovate existing buildings, beXLab is in fact enlarging towards information engineering, to tackle the digital side, and user experience design, to valorise the unique human contribution in building energy efficiency and sustainability.

#### **19.3 The Architectural Point of View**

The building environmental experience proposed by the beXLab Living Lab has been conceived on well-rooted principles in the discipline of Technology of Architecture.

Focusing on the appropriateness of the human habitat, the discipline is not limited to formal aspects but considers to the environmental and socio-cultural dimensions (Schiaffonati et al. 2011). Over the years it assumed as proper the ecological task of optimisation of buildings' environmental performance, starting from the design process. Moreover, the consideration of design as a social act (Nardi 2010) nourishes the perspective of engagement and participation of users in the transformation of the built environment.

By leveraging on the need-performance theory, the discipline of technology of architecture adopts a systemic approach that has exceeded the boundaries of the material technologies to evolve into softer ones, towards management and governance (Torricelli 2011), to "lead" the even more diversified contributions occurring in the definition of sustainable projects. For this reason, the discipline focuses both on the material and information transformation in the field of architecture, early recognising the role of ICT to support better design processes (Ciribini 1984).

In the wake of this disciplinary culture, the Med-EcoSuRe pilot project was intended as an occasion to innovate the building retrofit process by engaging its actors (academics, decision makers, stakeholders and users) in a common LL space and place of collaboration.

For the development of the pilot project, a building block hosting functions representative of the university life (teaching, study and research) was selected in the historical complex of Santa Verdiana in the UNESCO World Heritage city centre of Florence. Constructed in the 90s on the design of Arch. Roberto Maestro, the parallelepiped volume with north–south orientation has two floors, with a large room on the first one and other two rooms on the ground floor, separated by a central open/covered corridor (Fig. 19.2).

Due to the inconsistency of existing data and information, a survey of the building/plant system was conducted for the population of a preliminary BIM asset information model (LOD C - according to UNI 11337-4, 2017). Such information is useful from the earliest stages of the retrofit process for the definition of a reliable knowledge framework on the existing building, for a preliminary energy audit and for an improved communication in the LL (Fig. 19.3). The digital model has been exploited to analyse and simulate the environmental and energy behaviour of the building through different softwares, deepening the identification of the energy and indoor comfort criticalities, as follows:

**Fig. 19.2** South façade of the university pilot building in Florence

**Fig. 19.3** Image of the digital model of the pilot building

• Environmental analysis: the visualisation of the sun path in the building context highlights that the south façade with large glass surfaces suffers the absence of any type of shading device. Concerning natural ventilation, cross-ventilation cannot occur in the two rooms on the ground floor, due to fixed fixtures (Fig. 19.4);

**Fig. 19.4** Preliminary environmental analysis of the existing building

**Fig. 19.5** Preliminary thermo-hygrometer analysis of the opaque and transparent components in dynamic regime

and not shaded windows. Another impacting energy consumption is linked to the presence of lighting bodies with low-energy performance (neon) (Fig. 19.7).

Addressing the energy targets of the Med-EcoSuRe project, but also considering the specificities of the context of historical and cultural value, the architectural project for the energy retrofit was set up to solve the energy and indoor quality criticalities of the existing building, and formulated to achieve three main objectives:

Different retrofit scenarios have been integrated in the BIM model, simulated and evaluated by mixing traditional bioclimatic and innovative building technologies, permitting to appreciate the different degrees of improvement in comparison to the current building conditions, in terms of indoor comfort, energy performances and feasibility (Fig. 19.8).

It is possible to recognise the opportunities in the adoption of digital building models to address the green objectives in the first phases of the retrofit process:

• Standardised definition of the knowledge framework of the existing building to start a reliable retrofit process, representing a trustable and interoperable data and information container;

**Fig. 19.6** Preliminary analysis on the natural lighting in the pilot building

Moreover, digital models can be exploited to innovate the subsequent phases of intervention and post-management of the retrofitted building (operation and maintenance).

**Fig. 19.7** Preliminary simulation of the existing building energy behaviour

Yet, a key factor for the success of the digital modelling towards the definition of feasible scenarios is the validation of the model itself, which can only be achieved through a comparison with real dynamic data. In order to map the main boundary operative conditions, complex monitoring systems are needed together with specific expertise on measurements and data acquisition/post-processing techniques.

#### **19.4 The Energy Engineering Side**

Building technologies are, in most of the cases, well-known and universally standardised. National's regulations guide the design of new constructions imposing materials' specs, energy targets and boundary conditions for comfort and well-being (thermo-hygrometric, lighting and acoustic). The major part of recommendations is set on the basis of static calculations and is extrapolated through simplified models.

**Fig. 19.8** Preliminary architectural design of different retrofit solutions

The concrete challenge is to attest the performance of buildings and comfort status in real dynamic conditions with the influence of user's occupancy. That aim results even more hard to reach in the existing (buildings of the past decades and historical heritage) where a lack of information is present regarding structures and components such as wall stratigraphy and services. In such a context, it is really important to set up strategies and methodologies which allow acquiring useful data and creating a suitable matrix for the exhaustive description of the living environments. Tools must be configured in a very flexible and modular way in order to be replicable in different sites. The LL is effectively the proper space to configure measurements layouts and test them in operating conditions. Many sensors were installed for real-time monitoring of internal temperature distributions, relative humidity, heat loss flux, lighting levels, air quality as well as external parameters detected through a weather station (see pictures of Fig. 19.9, top). Actually, the amount of data is intentionally large because the setup of redundant data collection lets the cross-correlation, in the research phase, amongst the phenomena acting in the living laboratory involving users. The post-processing of measurement values achieves as a first goal the understanding of the real significance of each sensors' group and the definition of a compact and plug and play system to install in the next projects. In a second phase, the same collected data would be managed and aggregated to validate the digital model in existing context and set up the Digital Twin.

From a technical point of view, the environmental monitoring does not represent a critical aspect since the market proposes many solutions that can be easily

**Fig. 19.9** Setup of sensors inside the beXLab (top) and thermo-hygrometric comfort evaluation during January 2022 (bottom)

placed in rooms reducing the impact in the structures, plants and users; the available wireless configurations are in fact very little intrusive, indeed. On the other hand, the elaboration of the huge amount of data that could be collected especially in the long-term periods is a challenging task. Numerical parameters and technical information need to be translated in a simple, clear, educational form to involve the different actors (users, researchers, managers …), to make them aware and to suggest criticalities/opportunities.

For instance, according to national regulations such as UNI EN ISO 7730 (2006), the internal comfort level could be derived and the conduction of the living spaces quantified in terms of predicted mean votes and percentage of dissatisfied as shown in Fig. 19.9, bottom (referred to January 2022). Those objective results would be also compared and validated with the users' subjective perception, expressed through specific ongoing questionnaires (according to EN ISO 10551 2019).

#### **19.5 Opening Towards It and Users' Experience (UX)**

Considering the amount and complexity of the row data, currently, one of the pivotal challenges of the LL is the data organisation and visualisation of selected/aggregated information in a smooth, intuitive and pleasant manner.

The idea of experimenting a retrofit project that would be truly accessible and available to all the different kinds of users (managers, students and researchers) requires the customisation of the experience and different levels of data communication. This means that the same incoming information (e.g. from IoT sensors) should be differently addressed to the various users, for example to inform technical offices or disseminate the results to students.

The process of creating info visualisation requires data analysis and a deep understanding of users, of their need and abilities/limitations. The engagement of end-users and UX design in the LL comes with the target of raising the awareness and identifying, analysing and stimulating best human behaviours related to energy, comfort and well-being.

In recent decades, there is a growing phenomenon of translation towards the virtual/digital but also abstract data in visual representation that can easily interact with users and create outstanding quality experiences (Hassenzahl and Tractinsky 2006).

Once the idea of human–computer interaction (HCI) focused just in functional benefits and usability aspects (how to make computers as intuitive as possible), now the concept of UX goes with the idea of interactive technologies, works with a better understanding of knowledge fields, such as emotion graphics, storytelling and linguistics, and takes care of the all contextual aspects.

Despite the growing interest and research on info visualisation and UX in some fields, first of all the cultural one, they are almost undeveloped for the energy efficiency sector, especially concerning retrofitting processes on public buildings. In the age of globalisation and information technology, UX design can encourage the retrofitting process and stimulate the dissemination of contents on energy efficiency and environmental comfort, with innovative and creative solutions to engage people.

#### **19.6 Conclusions**

The interdisciplinary processes described in the present paper have been developed over time, and their implementation is ongoing. However, the objective of an effective green/digital transition in the building sector has immediately revealed the need for synergy amongst working groups from different disciplines and methods.

The system "building-plant-user" is so complex and multi-faceted that it could not be addressed from a single and limited point of view, requiring instead many approaches/languages to dialogue together, contaminating the knowledge and skills from "hard" and "soft" sciences.

Moreover, the complexity of the investigated phenomena needs to be simplified in order to spread the results to the largest number of users, each with their own specific background (from building and energy managers to end-users). beXLab is taking up this challenge, proposing itself as an ideal place where the articulated syntax of the "building-plant-user" system could be understood and codified.

In this context, the human being is placed at the centre not only as a user of the environment, where the maximum efficiency and comfort have to be guaranteed but, above all, as the main responsible for the proper management of the living spaces, of their impact on the health of the planet and its inhabitants.

#### **References**

Nardi G (2010) Percorsi di un pensiero progettuale. Maggioli Editore, Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 20 Digital—Twin for an Innovative Waterfront Management Strategy. Pilot Project DSH2030**

#### **Maria Giovanna Pacifico, Maria Rita Pinto, and Antonio Novellino**

**Abstract** In the era of smart cities, the digital twin of a settlement system allows not only the real-time control of the quality levers offers by the subsystems, but also the prediction of the future performance over the life cycle. This is feasible through the implementation of predictive models and the simulation of the impact that the design solutions can generate. The Digital and Sustainable Harbour 2030 (DSH2030) project, funded under the Liguria region's POR FESR, sees the cooperation of the Innovation, Development, and Sustainability structure of the Porto Antico of Genoa, with ETT S.p.A. supported by the Department of Architecture of Naples, Netalia S.r.l., BF Partners S.r.l., Colouree S.r.l., AiTrust S.r.l., Circle Garage S.r.l., and the University of Genoa in the MaLGA structure. In particular, the research question expressed by the local authority of the Porto Antico of Genoa concerns the measurement and evaluation of environmental parameters, in relation to the consumption and production of renewable energy; monitoring of the flow of people and vehicles (land and sea) for both security and commercial purposes; the control of safety performances and usability of the built system. A complex virtual model is the answer to which the partnership is working on. The paper illustrates the criteria and principles that inform the design, testing, and validation of an enhanced digital twin for the tourist port of Genoa. Specifically, it discusses the work carried out by ETT S.p.A. with the Department of Architecture of Naples that, through the integration of sensors, measurement technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning technologies, intends to prefigure new models of sustainable management and maintenance of the port area.

**Keywords** Digital twin · Smart harbor · Internet of Things

A. Novellino ETT Spa, Genoa, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. G. Pacifico (B) · M. R. Pinto University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. R. Pinto e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### **20.1 Introduction**

European Union and the international organizations attention (European Commission 2019; Patto dei sindaci per il Clima e l'energia Europa, https://www.pattod eisindaci.eu/about-it/l-iniziativa/il-patto-in-cifre.html) placed on the cities and periurban environments mitigation effects has emphasized the fundamental importance of day-by-day monitoring. The latter is aimed at obtaining a real-time built system and subsystems control, prediction of future performance, and implementation of models that can simulate the design and development solutions impacts. In addition, among the strategies settled within the PNRR for urban regeneration, the city system digitization takes a central role, launching toward the development of Smart Cities, in view of innovative, inclusive, and sustainable cities (European Commission 2016). In this perspective, the Digital Twin (DT) becomes a strategic tool for the implementation of innovative and sustainable management strategies of urban systems, for its configuration as a digital copy of the physical environment, the relationships between the parties and the processes in place, past and future. It is also a useful tool for the implementation of participatory processes that through the empowerment of citizens generate democratic cities. To that end, the paper focuses on harbor DT applied to the Ancient Port of Genoa that can be visualized through a platform made by multiple layers and different categories of data in virtual reality for collaborative and participatory processes, focusing on port management, security, and decision support. The approach described supports citizens and decision-makers and planning professionals with tools to achieve partnership. The quantitative and qualitative data collected through different type of sensors provide a clear reading of the port complexity, involving all the stakeholders in the management and developing process.

#### **20.2 Background Scenario: Digital Twin for Smart Settlement System**

The realization of a smart governance using information and communication technologies (ICT) is closely linked to the development of smart cities in order to improve decision-making through better collaboration among different stakeholders, including public administrations and citizens (Lara et al. 2016; Pereira et al. 2018). One example is the use of IoT to address citizens' needs and to improve their activities performances, to reduce negative impacts on the environment, to reduce costs of living (Mishra and Chakraborty 2020), and to ensure quality of built system and users' satisfaction (Pinto 2019).

Many countries and governments consider smart cities a solution to global warming, population growth, and resource depletion (Deng et al. 2021). Especially, if related to the built environment monitoring, e.g., fault detection and diagnostics system using sensor networks and AI-based modern technologies, they could generate some benefits such as reducing maintenance costs, reducing energy consumption and associated costs, increased productivity, and extended equipment life (Brunone et al. 2021; Halmetoja 2022).

At this point, defining a digital model of a settlement system is the core to develop innovative strategies of knowledge management where monitoring through sensors, measurement technologies, IoT, machine learning technologies provides a real-time update (Kaur et al. 2020) and offers an interface that allows monitoring the past and present operation and makes prediction about the future (Grieves 2014; Wang et al. 2021). Digitization, and specifically DT, appears as an opportunity to catalyze and monitor the processes of transformation and development of cities in a perspective of circular economy and sustainability.

The DT must be considered as a process (Wenner et al. 2021), a dynamic model made of data that have a permanent and constant connection with the real world. It is more frequently adopted in facilitating facilities management operation to optimize operation efficiency at both building level and city level, in order to better answer to the requirement for a sustainable and appropriate city and space management, particularly in the current pandemic and eventually the post COVID-19 pandemics, where occupancy detection is an important part of the facility management to ensure users' safety (Hou et al. 2021).

Liu et al. (2018) describe the components of DT: physical products in real space, virtual products in virtual space, and the connections of data and information that will tie the virtual and real products together; and the basic architecture that consists of sensor and measurement technologies, Internet IoT, and machine learning. Alongside this, Qi et al. (2021) design five dimension of DT: physical entities, virtual models, data, services and connections in digital twin.

Some prototypes have tested the functioning of the DT in the context of settlement systems, defining the potential of this tool. Dembski et al. (2020) have described the prototype of Herrenberg's DT, in Germany, where the virtual model is a model 3D of the built environment, and the data model consists in data from volunteered geographic information. The experimentation has revealed that urban digital twin allows to gain a better understanding of potential solutions for urban challenges improving the interaction processes between citizens on the one hand and official local representatives on the other. This provided the opportunity to test a series of scenarios and potential solutions as well as evaluate their impacts using a real-life case.

Another experimentation (Lu et al. 2020) was carried out within West Cambridge site of the University of Cambridge, here the DT simulate the behavior of a system of buildings, integrating heterogeneous data sources, supporting intelligent data query, and providing a smarter decision-making. This demonstrator integrates an as-is multilayered IFC Building Information Model (BIM), building management system data, space management data, real-time IoT-based sensor data, asset registry data, and an asset tagging platform. The demonstrator also includes a tool for improving asset maintenance and another one for asset tracking using augmented reality (AR) and equipment failure prediction.

Within the smart cities debate, port digitalization is defined as a complex phenomenon that concerns multiple aspects to control and monitor, and as Inkinen et al. (2021) suggests is a generic term, and it refers to the adoption, collection, storage, analysis, and use of digital information in ports and port communities. It is manifested through digital platforms, and it has impacts on operational management causing changes in organizational work cultures and practices in ports (Heilig et al. 2017).

#### **20.3 Materials and Methods**

The Digital and Sustainable Harbour 2030 (DSH2030) project, funded under Liguria region's POR FESR, has the aim of developing and enhancing a Digital Twin of the Porto Antico of Genoa to supervise and optimize the management processes of the area. The construction of the digital model is based on collecting data from different sources and moving through IoT, 5G, and AI.

The area object of the research project (Fig. 20.1) is the one under the management of Porto Antico di Genova SpA, included within the perimeter of the Expo of Genoa defined according to art. 3 c.1 l. August 23, 1988 n. 373, an area of over 130,000 m2 of

**Fig. 20.1** Expo area managed by Porto Antico di Genova SpA: the buildings in yellow and the soil in gray

which 71,000 m2 of covered area and 59,000 m2 outdoors, characterized by different building typologies, different activities and uses.

Its current configuration is the result of a process of urban regeneration that began essentially in 1992 and that still continues today in the structuring and completion of projects that aim to connect the city to the sea.

DT become the ambient where the administration can accurately simulate and plan the area's activities in a way that is healthy, safe, and comfortable for visitors and those who work there, efficient in terms of resource management for those who manage it, and sustainable for the environment.

In order to design a proper and useful DT model, it was significant having a dialogue with the policymakers to well understand how supporting their decisionmaking and create a virtual ambient through which to more easily manage the port system.

According to this view, at the basis of the platform for data exploitation, aggregation, and management, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders (managers of: Event Management and Procurement and Facility Management offices) to properly understand themes to be addressed and how. Therefore, in order to improve and maximize the operability of the area management structure, a platform to administrate is being implementing in order to make available IoT, geo-referenced data, processed and produced data (Nuzzo et al. 2021). The management of the input data coming from different categories of sensors, through the structuring of diversified information layers for each type of data, will allow the manager to keep under control the performance of the systems, the flows of people moving within the area, anomalous consumptions.

Navigating in the different parts of the platform, that provides digital maps, with overview, zoom, and selection functions, allows users to view and interact with the data and metadata that include links to retrieve further documentation and references (Fig. 20.2). In relation to the above, IoT technologies are essential to make every object, person or building a source of data usable in real time; advanced and increasingly powerful video analysis algorithms, thanks to artificial intelligence approaches, make surveillance cameras powerful and advanced smart sensors able to collect a large amount of information; data storage requires a secure and reliable cloud. Finally, artificial intelligence through machine learning techniques allows to extract information content of great relevance from the acquired data.

The prototype developing within DSH2030 project and visualized in virtual reality, for supporting a collaborative management platform, is set up as follows: a 3D model of the built environment provided by local authorities (Traverso 2021), data collected from an heterogeneous type of sensors (mobile devices, sensors, video content analysis), a multi-layer platform for aggregate data exposure and management.

Particularly, the collection of data for monitoring is structured on three levels: The first level is through the installation of smart meters for energy production and consumption, air quality, weather forecasts, sea level, water consumption; the second level is through the installation of cameras; the third is through mobile applications developed within the project that allow to receive from users alerts about faults on

**Fig. 20.2** Integrated and multi-layer platform for the port management

the built in systems on one hand and their position over time on the other. Regarding the monitoring for maintenance strategies, it was decided to apply and extend the field of competence of the Maintenance Urban Sharing Tool application (Viola and Borriello 2017). It is a product of a synergy between Department of Architecture (DiARC) and Structures for engineering and architecture (DiSt) of the University of Naples, Stress Scarl and ETT SpA. This tool, that is also object of a doctoral ongoing research, is composed by a mobile app to send alerts for the detection of faults and performance anomalies on subsystems and a Web application to incorporate the notification sent by the app users for the purpose of timely, effective, and efficient management of inspections and maintenance interventions. Moreover, the application MUST has been complemented with a function that allows monitoring of water meters (Fig. 20.3); this implementation derives from the administration's need to have a digitized monitoring of water meters, which is currently managed by writing data on sheets of paper that are, only later, digitized by the hand of an operator.

The optimization of management processes, through the reading of data on the platform from constant monitoring, has as a further objective the improvement of the attractiveness and safety of the area by promoting a digital and sustainable development.

**Fig. 20.3** Concept for the dashboard aim to monitor water consumption

#### **20.4 Conclusions**

The DSH2030 project therefore has a strong innovative character, across all its main components. It proposes a holistic view of real/virtual space that makes it vividly 'intelligent' position data, presence data, projection of displacements and accesses, etc. together with the data acquired by the distributed sensors allow to carry out elaborations, correlations, scenario simulations that are made available in the dashboards dedicated to the area manager (Porto Antico di Genova SpA). In this way, it is possible to close the chain between those who manage the area, who plan the activities and action in case of critical situations, and the final are users.

In the context of European development policies, the research outlines innovative ways and applications of knowledge management oriented to promote sustainable management and development of waterfronts. The enhanced Digital Twin will allow a real-time monitoring of the port system performances. DSH2030 is a living demonstrator of how data-driven tools also allow to effectively support both the needs expressed by the Porto Antico SpA, as operator, of continuous optimization of all processes (economic, security, environmental) for which it is responsible, and to offer adaptive tools and models able to effectively react to sudden changes in the scenarios of use and expectations of end users, as well as possible future new emergencies.

#### **References**

European Commission (2016) Agenda 2030

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 21 BIM and BPMN 2.0 Integration for Interoperability Challenge in Construction Industry**

**Hosam Al-Siah and Antonio Fioravanti**

**Abstract** Interoperability is a growing challenge for the construction industry in general, especially for the designing process, where it is exposed to many challenges due to the most critical part of this sector that related to heterogeneous information exchange. Particularly, during the implementation of a project where there is a need for sharing and exchanging a huge amount of data among several actors to accomplish the design process. Therefore, the need for real supportive tools has emerged to facilitate the process of data collection and digitalization in order to automate the whole process. However, different kinds of issues prevent improving the interoperability in the ACE industry. This paper focuses on the barriers of improving the interoperability in this industry sector and proposes a new method of linking and collecting the data from different actors. To this objective cloud storage for flowcharts and building information model "BIM" have been used. One of the best flowcharting languages— Business Process Modelling and Notation "BPMN" 2.0—has been adopted, where the data will be collected and the process will be explained and connected directly to the BIM model to be reviewed, used, and saved.

**Keywords** Design process · Building management · Interoperability · BPMN · BIM

#### **21.1 Introduction**

The designing and management tools within the construction industry have been improved significantly during the last century, which could be referred mainly to process complexity, and the new level of detailed project with large number of actors' data that have to be managed. Moreover, the improvement of the computer's

Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
A. Fioravanti e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
H. Al-Siah (B) · A. Fioravanti

capability and the progressive introduction of ICT in Architecture Engineering and Construction "AEC" industry from one side simplified and made easier processes and checking, from the other side contributed to make work more complex and fragmented due to divergent specializations. ICT was so popular that was created the terms computer-aided design "CAD" and computer-aided manufacturing "CAM." Despite the great benefits of using the computers, it was initially limited to engineering 2D/3D drawings and "hand science" model calculations without focusing much on other aspects—a part of advanced research field. Building ICT improvement led to suggest building information modeling "BIM" as a repository of many possible information related to the building that are used in different activities related to manage, design, and control different buildings project aspects.

Since it first introduction by professor C. Eastman in the 70s, BIM helped in developing the industry, where it was supposed to be a repository of project information to facilitate the exchange of information within the same studio and then with other studios and related actors. Nowadays, BIM is a full-fledged, object-oriented, three-dimensional model that represent a digital building to track physical characteristics and functions. The adoption and implementation of BIM tools increased globally among the major players of the construction industry over the recent years, for example, it reached 99% in UK in 2020 (NBS Enterprises Ltd. 2020) (Fig. 21.1).

The adoption and implementation of the BIM tools by the stakeholders (Fig. 21.2) has emerged the benefits they got of using them; Ku and Taiebat (2011) identified seventeen BIM functions that can be used by General Contractors whereas Langar

and Pearce (2014) identified eighteen such BIM functions for designers. These and many other studies encourage the software houses and researchers in the digital AEC field to invest in this technologies and in the related tools; however, there is obviously a gap between the BIM utopia promised and the current available tools, where the practical experiences proved that BIM tools alone are not enough as the current situation, where during the years the vendors, developers, and researchers gave unintentionally sometimes—a lot of promises the technology could not achieve yet. The prof. R Miettinen and his team showed four elements in order to reach the BIM utopia, firstly, solving the issue of using single BIM data or a variety of BIM models together with other software and tools, secondly improving the collaboration within BIM tools; thirdly, they discuss problems of using BIM during the whole lifecycle of the building which is a challenge has to be solve; finally, they argue that there is no conclusive evidence of increasing the productivity after using BIM tools alone which is point has to be clarified (Miettinen and Paavola 2014).

Typically, the construction project on one side involves many actors who use wide range of programs and tools to manage, design, control, and construct the projects and save different kinds of data and information. On the other side, the today technology has inadequate interoperability among the actors, and there is still a dearth of investigations addressing interoperability issues in the regarding of code point of view and the concept one. In this paper, we analyze the main interoperability challenges for the ACE industry regarding to the use of BIM tools and explained the barriers that prevent the development of the technology in the construction industry from the first point of view. Furthermore, we present the proposed solutions as have been represented in BIM literature and make a propose about the cloud storing with a central database to face this challenge.

#### **21.2 Interoperability in Construction Industry**

The development of the construction industry through history created new projects, more complex and have a lot of characteristics which makes them extremely difficult to predict their different outcomes. That convinced the stockholders in ACE industry to develop new ways and tools to control the whole project's processes and improve the exchanging of information and data among all the stakeholders of the project.

Interoperability in the context of the Information and Communication Technology—ICT—could be defined as the ability of different systems, computerized products, and/or individuals to work together and exchange information with each other even when they have divergent fields (Carrara et al. 2009b). This makes it one of the most important things for develop any industry, especially the construction industry where millions of information have to be exchanged among many actors. However, many issues prevent the development of interoperability which we named as interoperability barriers, which could be categorized into three main types: conceptual, technological, and organizational barriers.

**Fig. 21.2** Adoption of functions of BIM by architectural firms (Langar and Pearce 2014)

#### *21.2.1 The Conceptual Barriers*

The conceptual barriers are mainly related to the syntactic and semantic incompatibilities of information exchanged between the actors (Ullberg et al. 2009); these problems concern the modeling at a high level of abstraction and how different actor could understand the same data and information in different ways (Carrara et al. 2009a), which consider as a big challenge for the industry development, where the data mostly are collected without explanation—called implicit information which create different kinds of problems, for example, what the architect sees as a door or a window to connect the room with the garden the energy engineer will see them as thermal bridge have to manage and take in the consideration and so on. This opens a discussion about the actors' different goals and the future of the building information management itself where the main idea of it is to be a repository of project's data that will used during the building life cycle, which was a great idea when it first introduced, clashes the today industry situation where is required to reaches the point of knowledge exchanging instead data among the actors.

#### *21.2.2 The Technological Barriers*

The technological barriers are mainly the problems that related to the ability of the actors to effectively send, import/export, and use information and data between each other, moreover, those problems related to use the computers or ICT to communicate and exchange information (Ullberg et al. 2009). The challenges from this point of view are more related to the standardization of the files and the data formats or natural format, where through the history the number of developers increased, where almost each developer using its private data format to use their files which create the need to standardize a common standard. The first standard developed was IGES one which was use within The National Aeronautics and Space Administration— NASA—as an independent agency in the U.S. Since then, many data formats and standards have been developed and used widely like Design Web Format, Standard for the Exchange of Product Data, and Industry Foundation Classes. The last one is the most detailed, developed, and popular open standard available nowadays. IFC standard managed and developed by buildingSMART as a non-profit international organization that aims to improve the exchanging of information between software applications that used in the construction industry. BuildingSMART International has implemented the IFC standard using XML technologies as ifcXML specification (BuildingSMART 2007). XML is a platform-independent language for representing data and has been used in the development of Web service applications. However, the performance of Web services has shown a significant decrease when using XML data causing by the low efficiency of reading and parsing XML data during the execution of services.

#### *21.2.3 The Organizational Barriers*

This kind of barriers focus on the problems from the organization point of view, where the challenge here are concerned with the incompatibilities of organization structure and management techniques implemented in different enterprises and related to human problems like task distribution, responsibility, human resources management and authority (Ullberg et al. 2009).

With the first suggestion of the idea of building information modeling and during the decades of adopting it for the designing and managing the projects within the construction industry, many promises have been made about the ability of the new

**Fig. 21.3 a** Data restricted in documents; **b** central clouding database. *Source* Own work

technology to exchange data; however, many studies established it as one of the biggest challenges for the development of the technology (Cerovsek 2011; Sattler et al. 2019; Singh et al. 2011; Tchouanguem Djuedja et al. 2019). This problem is referred to different reasons; firstly, there is a lack of multidisciplinary coordination among different stakeholders of the project; secondly, since there are many developers in this field, it become difficult to integrating different models from different sources; moreover there is a difficulty in exchanging the information between the actors of the project at the organization level; thirdly, the technology faces problem in the modifying the models using different tools due to the alternative perceptions which depend on the purpose of use; finally, different kinds of data are not easily shareable or useable, where although many documents are in electronic documents like PDF—there is a problem in extracting the information from them; in other words, there is a rigidity in the information that is saved in this kind of files, which make them not dynamically useable. In additional to that this way required the actor to share the file with all the related actors (Fig. 21.3).

Consequently, it was understood that overcoming this challenge will bring many benefits to the entire construction industry, where it will be reflected on the efficiency and productivity within the projects on the organizational and administrative level and enhance the environmental sustainability due to better understanding and sharing models.

#### **21.3 BIM and BPMN Integration**

BPMN nowadays is one of the most advanced flowcharting tools available, where it provides an intuitive notation to represent any business process in the form of flowcharts, with a comprehensible representation of constructs defined in softwareexecution language and came with a clear standard which facilitates communication and understanding.

The proposed method is based on two main concepts, cloud storing and connecting, and central database, where in this method the tools are divided into three parts (Fig. 21.4). The first part—in the lift of Fig. 21.4—is the BIM model as a comprehensive repository of data related to the building during its lifecycle; the connection with this part will depend on the scripting codes to import and export data; in this part, data will be saved and used by the designers. The second part—in the right of the Fig. 21.4—part consists of the model of Business Process Model and Notation "BPMN," where this model will contain the business process description flowcharts and clarify the actor responsibilities within the process depending on the country codes where the project will be implemented. The last part will be an interface program to make the live connection between the two models allow data collected from the BIM to populate BPMN, with availability to view the entities details and description. With this connection method, we aim to overcome the rigidity of the data within the documents and speeding the designing process during the project management.

**Fig. 21.4** BIM and BPMN construction data connection. *Source* Own work

#### **21.4 Conclusion**

The projects within the construction industry become more detailed through the years, which makes the right managing and exchanging information between the actors at the right time as a challenge for the industry; in this paper, we reviewed in details the types of barriers that prevent improving the interoperability within the construction industry and categorized them to three types conceptual that related to the understanding data, technological that related to the transferring data, and organizational that related to the responsibility of managing data.

In the end, we proposed a methodology adopting the idea of central database cloud connection and suggest creating link between BPMN—as a process flowcharts and collection data from the stakeholders, and BIM—as a repository of building information. This approach is supposed to overcome the data rigidity in different files and to adopt processes flowchart to increase the sharable knowledge between the actors, where the BPMN model will carry on the knowledge that will be shared.

**Acknowledgements** The research has been partially financed by the National Interest Research Program 2017 (PRIN—Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale–Prot. 2017EY3ESB) titled "A Distributed Digital Collaboration Framework for Small and Medium-Sized Engineering and Construction Enterprises" of MUR (Italian Ministry of University and Research).

#### **References**

and systems management (IESM), 25–27 Sept 2019, pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/IESM45 758.2019.8948082

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 22 Digital Twin Approach for Maintenance Management**

**Massimo Lauria and Maria Azzalin**

**Abstract** After years of slightest attention to the environment, low productivity, and least rates of technological innovation, the construction sector has started a slow but in-depth review of its statutes and priorities. The ongoing ecological and digital transition opens to new opportunities connected to the implemental policies of Industry 4.0—at now Industry 5.0—and related enabling technologies. Opportunities that strongly reaffirm the need for innovative, responsible, and sustainable governance of the life cycle of buildings, placing it in the new perspective of Digital Twin approach. Starting from this scenario, the paper presents some ongoing upgrade of a maintenance management model expressly aimed at optimizing activities in the operation and maintenance phase from which evident economic, environmental, and social extra costs arise.

**Keywords** Digital twin · Maintenance · openBIM · Internet of things · Cloud

#### **22.1 Background**

A new "stage" in the historical sequence of Industrial Revolutions is arising, and the current Fourth one—started in 2014 with the launch of Industry 4.0—is now rapidly changing its statutes (Schwab 2016).

The EU report "Industry 5.0: Toward more sustainable, resilient and humancentric industry" strongly affirms the need to speed up the underway digital and ecological transformation to deeply restore environment, economy, and communities. Three are the key-principles: centrality of man, self-sustainability, flexibility, and resilience. A new Collaborative Industry and Super Smart Society evolves

M. Lauria · M. Azzalin (B)

Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Reggio Calabria, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. Lauria e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
characterized by intelligent cooperation between machines and humans (European Commission 2021a).

The ongoing transition, digital and ecological, opens to innovate opportunities come from the implemental policies of Industry 4.0—at now Industry 5.0—and related enabling technologies.

Many sectors, from aerospace to aeronautics, from complex industrial scenarios to automotive and medicine too, are using, with increasing pervasiveness, digitization, automation, Digital Twin approaches. After years of low productivity, equally reduced rates of technological innovation and least attention to the environment, also the construction sector seems to have finally begun a slow but in-depth review and innovation of its statutes and priorities as well as of its operativeness.

The urgency of responsible and sustainable governance of built environment is broadly matched by three important challenges of European Green Deal—circularity, digitalization, ecology—and by their related strategic plans: "Circular Economy Action Plan" (European Commission 2020a), "A Europe fit for the digital age" (European Commission 2020b), and "A Renovation Wave for Europe. Greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives" (European Commission 2020c).

The first, in promoting the principles of circularity throughout the life cycle of buildings, introduces policies that increase material efficiency, reduce climate impacts, and improve durability and adaptability of buildings in the life cycle (European Commission 2020a).

The second, by encouraging digital transformation, also affirms its role as a tool for managing climate change and achieving the green transition through a humancentered approach (European Commission 2020b).

The third formalizes the goal of doubling the upgrading of existing building stock by 2030, giving it greater energy efficiency and contributing to the decarbonization process (European Commission 2020c).

New challenges that re-address the issues of energy efficiency and sustainability by strongly linking them to a whole life cycle approach and to an increasing attention for operational and maintenance phase, O&M. A new perspective that recognized O&M as the longest and most qualitatively articulated phase of the life cycle, responsible for about 80% of total costs and the greatest environmental impacts (Aghimien et al. 2018).

In this scenario, it is strategic to properly manage an increasing amount of diverse information: from performance data under use conditions to behavioral and experiential aspects related to end users, their well-being, and their level of satisfaction (Bilal et al. 2016).

With specific reference to O&M phase, several tools have long been available: computerized maintenance management system and computer-aided facility management, CMMS and CAFM, building automation systems, BASs. To these tools are now added innovative approaches that exploit new interoperability tools able to facilitate the sharing of all available information and implement the potentialities of managing data acquired by real-time monitoring of building performance.

These tools are based on open standards—Industrial Foundation Classes, IFC (ISO 16739:2018)—and data specifications—Construction Operations Building information exchange, COBie (NBIMS-US-V3.4:2015) that are specifically for the exchange of information between the design and use phases (Cabinet Office 2012).

BuildingSMART (https://www.buildingsmart.org/) has long been engaged in their development and transfer into international standard. The aim is defining common information requirements and languages that could be shared among all different operators involved in each phase of building process and life cycle (ISO 19650- 1:2018; UNI EN 17412–1:2021).

Both IFC and COBie have been assumed as tools to support Service Life Planning (ISO 15686 Series), through the definition of "sets of IFC properties" (ISO 15686- 4:2014) that may be used in the application of service life assessment methods (Factor Method, ISO 15686-2:2012), in defining environmental impacts (ISO 15686-6:2004 Withdrawn), in Life Cycle Costing (ISO 15686-5: 2017), in structuring of feedback of data from practice (ISO 15686-7:2017) (Patacas et al. 2015).

Now, interoperability tools, building information modeling, BIM, Internet of Things, IoT, domotics and building automation control systems, BACS, open to innovative paradigms and opportunities related to Digital Twin approach in buildings.

#### **22.2 Digital Twin Approach**

In 2011, Michael Grieves introduced the term Digital Twin, DT, to define the synchronization between two realities: physical objects in real space, virtual objects in virtual space (Grieves 2011).

Physical and virtual objects are linked through the mutual exchange of data throughout the entire life cycle, both in real time and asynchronously (Bouchard 2016).

In 2019, the Gartner Inc. placed Digital Twin among the five emerging trends that would drive technology innovation for the next decade (Gartner Inc. 2019).

Nowadays, Digital Twin is one of principal technological nodes of Industry 5.0, capable of interacting physical and virtual objects, Big Data, IoT, blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, AI (Evans et al. 2019).

In the construction sector, Digital Twin permits optimizing the life cycle of buildings and infrastructures through the management of all available information including that acquired through performance simulation and real-time monitoring.

It allows predicting future performance; experimenting, simultaneously, changes and/or improvements without having to test them on the product itself or on special mock-ups; developing simulations in use with changes in state and boundary conditions, and machine learning.

Its application gets concrete and precise usefulness at O&M phase in structuring decision-making processes, planning predictive maintenance strategies, reducing the impact on the environment, improving the comfort and satisfaction of end users.

Furthermore, the real-time update of data from the IoT system and sensors allows continuous detection of state of health, operational conditions, anomalies, downtime and inefficiencies, preventing potential risk situations.

Three are the essential elements of a Digital Twin for the construction sector.

BIM model and Smart Building concern purely technological and operational aspects. Although fundamental, nevertheless they represent only partial components of the whole digital ecosystem that comprehends also human aspect (Pasini et al. 2016).

Digital Twin allows interaction between people and buildings maximizing the user experience and transferring it into life cycle and O&M decision-making processes, calibrating needs, methods, times, and costs.

#### **22.3 Digital Twins for a Maintenance Management Model**

BIM model makes already possible: to identify and correct detections and/or interferences between architectural and/or structural and/or plant engineering projects; to increase efficiency in time management during construction phase; to verify accuracy and completeness of information and their circulation among various operators.

In O&M, phase is not the same yet.

Nowadays, the Digital Twin approach applied to O&M represents an area with still many criticalities nevertheless extremely challenging too (Delgado and Oyedele 2021).

The recent EU report on "Digital Building Logbooks," DBL, encourages the use of Digital Twin approach. It deals with the definition of a common European approach covering all relevant building information, enable to synergies, interoperability, data consistency, and information exchange. It supports the widespread use of DBLs across Europe as tool able to contribute to several high-profile policy initiatives already mentioned in the paper (European Commission 2020a, b, c, 2021a, b).

In Italy, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and the National Research Plan 2021–2027, albeit from different perspectives, affirm the strategic importance of the Digital Twin approach for permanent monitoring of structural integrity and operational functionality of buildings and infrastructures, as well as for realization of smart grids, smart infrastructures, smart buildings.

The diffusion of BIM methodologies, their integration with IoT technologies and related applications through Digital Twin approaches, the development of open standards, IFC and COBie, as well as the availability of properly structured, accessible and updatable data and the adaptation of legacy systems represent the frontier of the new challenges of research and standardization.

They also constitute some focuses of R&D actions carried out by BIG srl, Building Innovative Governance, Academic Spin-off of which the authors are two founders.

Among current activities, carried out in partnership with ACCA Software Spa, there is the proposal of a maintenance management model, MMM, for innovative governance of real estate assets (Lauria and Azzalin 2020). The MMM promotes an active dialogue between the actors and operators involved in O&M phase, allows sharing all available information, introduces innovative ways of collecting, processing and management data aimed at activating predictive maintenance strategies. Thanks to real-time monitoring features, it also configures a potential "observatory" of over the time changes of building components and products, of their operation and modes of use.

The MMM uses Digital Twin approaches, enhancing the potential of ICT and Geographic Information Systems, GIS. It offers the integration between BIM model, IoT technologies domotic and building automation control systems, for monitoring of performance in use, acquisition and real-time recording of data.

It operates in a digital cloud environment, usable with a browser, putting together viewer technologies, virtual reality, and augmented reality (Fig. 22.1).

Its level of technological maturity is at now a TRL 6 (Technology demonstrated in a relevant environment).

**Fig. 22.1** Maintenance management model. *Source* By Authors (Lauria and Azzalin 2020)

The MMM is part of the proposal related to the start-up of BIG srl financed with POR Calabria Region funds (2019/20); recently it has obtained two-year funding under Smart&Start Italia Facilitation Program of Invitalia spa, for its implementation, prototyping, patenting, experimentation, and marketing.

It has also received several awards confirming the innovativeness of the proposed idea and won two separate editions of the "Innovation Award" of the Chamber of Commerce of Reggio Calabria in 2019 and 2021.

Closely related to the MMM upgrade actions is the research activity: Infinity BIM research. Design, construction, and maintenance of digital building model for the Digital Twin, funded by MISE, whose general objective is to create new products for the AEC sector supply chain through the application of BIM methodologies.

The experimentation of the MMM, currently in progress, is at now applied to two study cases: the Citadel of the *Mediterranean* University of Reggio Calabria (Fig. 22.2), and the industrial plant of Mangiatorella spa, a mineral water bottling company, one of the most important in southern Italy (Fig. 22.3).

**Fig. 22.2** Citadel of the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy. *Source* By Authors

**Fig. 22.3** Mangiatorella spa, a mineral water bottling company, Stilo, Italy. *Source* By Authors

In particular, two ongoing activities are strictly functional to the upgrade of the MMM: structured collection of information and digitization of all available information. They both constitute the already operative services delivered and commercialized by BIG srl.

In a digital twin approach perspective, the two aforesaid activities permit advanced use and share of available information by different types of operators/users with mobile technology, cloud, RFID tags.

At now, the implementation of BIM model (openBIM format) is carrying out through the definition and writing of specific parameters for maintenance activities planning—a Digital Twin for maintenance—with a first level of connection between interoperability systems and informative capital (IFC format).

Since now, referring to collecting information, the outcomes confirm the criticalities expected and expressed in EU Report on DBL (European Commission 2021b), concerning the lack of organized and structured archives that make existing information not only available but also above all easily accessible and usable.

Regarding digitization, the possibility of using reverse engineering approaches— "scan to BIM" procedures—allows the control and integration of information derived from the project documentation made available by the client.

The two activities introduced—structured collection of information and digital modeling—both converge in the experimentation of Digital Twin for maintenance and in the related definition of the MMM. It is based on a preliminary deductive action that, starting from the classification of building elements as codified by UNI 8290, aims at verifying the possibility to identify homogeneous families of sets of specific properties (characteristics, performance, failures, anomalies, controls, etc.).

These will be assumed for the purposes of interoperable management of information in the O&M phase, also according to the information required for compiling the three operational documents of maintenance plan—a mandatory document at Italian normative level (DPR 207/2010 art. 38).

A delimitation of application field referring to window and thermal conditioning system has been assessed. Such delimitation has been assumed with the aim of defining the relative need and/or the necessary information contents.

The quantity and degree of confidence of the information to be included in the BIM models refers to an open process of continuous implementation. All available information will be used in relationship with those required from national standards (UNI 11337-4), from new definitions of Information Needs (ISO 19650-1:) and from the structuring of specific Information Delivery, IDs (UNI EN 17412-1:2021).

The experimentation, after the phases above introduced and subsequent validation of specific IDs, will provide for verification of its replicability.

#### **22.4 Conclusions**

The first results of research activities underway show the need to define since the beginning the correct flow of information with respect to each of the operators involved (who); the timing (when) with respect to which this information must be included and/or must be available; the methods (how and where) of sharing. Needs confirmed in the mentioned EU Report on DBL (European Commission 2021b).

Today, the technologies and the various hardware, software and cloud applications are increasingly powerful, able to manage and process a greater amount of information, favoring its sharing.

Unresolved nodes remain, however, the precise information framework to refer to, the interoperability of information, as well as the management of bidirectional interoperability between modeling and simulation software.

Issues that represent the goals of the ongoing activities, here only in part introduced, and carried out by the research group.

These aims, as also stated by BuildingSMART at the various national chapters, refer therefore to a basic criticality, not yet resolved, which is the need for coding and/or shared classification of information. A theme that is certainly crucial from the point of view of the use of interoperability formats and so for the development of the Digital Twin approach for O&M phase.

#### **References**

Bouchard J (2016) Digital twins: identical, but different. Oliver Wyman Partner

buildingSMART. https://www.buildingsmart.org/

Cabinet Office (2012) COBie data drops

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 23 Digital Infrastructure for Student Accommodation in European University Cities: The "HOME" Project**

#### **Oscar Eugenio Bellini, Matteo Gambaro, Maria Teresa Gullace, Marianna Arcieri, Carla Álvarez Benito, Sabri Ben Rommane, Steven Boon, and Maria F. Figueira**

**Abstract** Finding reliable and safe accommodation is a key obstacle to students' international mobility. While the European Commission plans a tri-fold increase of Erasmus+ participants by 2027, allowing international students to get suitable accommodation remains one of the main difficulties encountered during the mobility experience. European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are unable to cover the majority of student accommodation demand. Indeed, as stated by Eurostudent VII Report, only 17% of students in Europe find home abroad in student accommodation facilities. Moreover, in accordance with the Erasmus+ Impact Study 2019, 23% of the students involved in the survey considered very important to have support in finding accommodation abroad during mobility along with insurance and other practical aspects. This contribution explores the first results of the European project *HOME*  (*Home of Mobile Europeans*). The project, currently ongoing, is funded by the 2019 Key Action 2 Erasmus+ call and developed by six European partners. According to the digital transition planned by the Erasmus+ Programme, HOME supports EU

O. E. Bellini e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. Gambaro e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
M. Arcieri e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
C. Á. Benito European University Foundation (EUF), Brussels, Belgium

S. B. Rommane Erasmus Student Network AISBL (ESN), Brussels, Belgium

S. Boon Housing Anywhere, Rotterdam, Netherlands

M. F. Figueira International Union of Property Owners (UIPI), Brussels, Belgium

© The Author(s) 2023 E. Arbizzani et al. (eds.), *Technological Imagination in the Green and Digital Transition*, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29515-7\_23

247

O. E. Bellini · M. Gambaro · M. T. Gullace (B) · M. Arcieri Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
mobility by providing students and trainees with a digitalized infrastructure that integrates the search for accommodation within existing European digital mobility initiatives, such as the Erasmus+ App. Moreover the project defines a set of living "quality labels" to increase the transparency of information about accommodation offer at the European level. Furthermore, educational resources and a training toolkit will be available, in the HOME website, to spread and replicate the project's learnings results. Once operational, HOME will represent an essential digital solution for a more accessible and quality student accommodation offer.

**Keywords** Digital infrastructure · Erasmus+ programme · European learning mobility · Student accommodation quality labels · Home of Mobile Europeans (HOME)

#### **23.1 Context of the Research**

Supporting international education and mobility opportunities, for students, academics, and trainers, is one of the high priorities of the European Commission.

Since its establishment in 1987, the Erasmus Programme (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) has significantly increased. Until 2020, the Programme reached more than 11.7 million participants (Fig. 23.1a), becoming one of the most important mobility programs in the world.

Despite the mobility restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020, the Erasmus+ Programme 2014–2020 closed with a positive record of participants. New social behaviors, the growth of digital environments for teaching and learning, and blended mobility opportunities highlighted the importance of digitalization in processes, tools, and services for education and mobility.

The new Erasmus+ Programme 2021–2027 has been extended and enriched in four strategic areas: digital transition, social cohesion, sustainable growth, strengthening European identity, and active citizenship. Its budget has almost doubled to over e28 billion (compared to e14.7 billion for 2014–2020) (Fig. 23.1b) to further support the mobility opportunities according to the strategic priorities of the *Inclusion and Diversity Plan*, the *Digital Education Plan*, the *Youth Participation Strategy*, and the *European Green Deal* (European Commission 2019, 2021a, b, c, 2022). Another key step in the digitalization of the Programme is a series of important projects supported by the EU, such as the *Erasmus Without Paper (EWP)*1 and the *European Student Card.*<sup>2</sup>

<sup>1</sup> https://www.erasmuswithoutpaper.eu.

<sup>2</sup> https://education.ec.europa.eu/levels/higher-education/european-student-card-initiative.

**Fig. 23.1 a** Erasmus mobility programme period 1987–2020, number of participants. *Source*  Erasmus+ Annual report 2020. **b** Budget of Erasmus+ programmes. *Source* European Commission Erasmus+ Call 2021

Moreover, the *Erasmus*+ *App* allows students in mobility to identify themselves, access services connected to the Erasmus+ Programme such as the Online Learning Agreement, and manage all administrative steps related to their mobility period.

In the face of this significant effort for the *digital transformation* of Erasmus mobility and the internationalization of European HEIs, finding reliable and affordable accommodation is one of the main obstacles to student mobility (Kuzmane et al. 2017; Hauschildt et al. 2021). Complying with quality requirements and finding flexible rental conditions for students, particularly in the private market, is tangible challenges for those that decide to spend a period abroad for study or traineeship purposes.

Furthermore, with the Covid-19 pandemic, students' preferences concerning accommodation changed significantly. The Erasmus Student Network's 2020 survey with around 22,000 respondents and focusing on the impact of Covid-19 on mobility students shows that student accommodation has been one area with major issues, along with transportation and other basic needs (Gabriels and Benke-Aberg 2020).

In response to this framework, the HOME (Home of Mobile Europeans) project provides a digitalized infrastructure that integrates the search for accommodation with the European student mobility initiatives. Through this interface, mobility students can find more easily an accommodation, assess, and compare it through different groups of quality labels. Therefore, the project connects the **Fig. 23.2** HOME project's logo

different stakeholders that gravitate within the world of student accommodation: students, (HEIs), housing providers, markets intermediaries, governmental (GOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The relevance of mobility digital services strongly rose during and after the pandemic. In this framework, the Erasmus+ App is a pivotal step forward. Furthermore, the future integration of the HOME project within the Erasmus+ App, and more in general, to the Erasmus+ Programme could represent a significant contribution at the European and potentially global level.

#### **23.2 The HOME Project—Home of Mobile Europeans**

HOME (Fig. 23.2) facilitates students in finding the most suitable accommodation to their preferences and guides the private and public housing providers in showcasing their online offers, highlighting their accommodation's features and strengths. The project is carried out by six partners from five EU countries, selected from six groups of relevant stakeholders: *Universities* (Politecnico di Milano), *European Foundations* (European University Foundation—EUF3 ), *International Students organizations* (Erasmus Student Network—ESN),4 *Accommodation Providers*, (Housing Anywhere5 and International Union of Property Owners—UIPI),6 and an experienced trainer (Confia International).7

HOME provides an univocal reading of private and public accommodation physical and digital characteristics pursues three main key objectives:

<sup>3</sup> https://uni-foundation.eu.

<sup>4</sup> https://www.esn.org.

<sup>5</sup> https://housinganywhere.com.

<sup>6</sup> https://www.uipi.com.

<sup>7</sup> https://www.confiainternational.eu.

The project develops:

To achieve such objectives, HOME fosters four working groups (Fig. 23.3), five intellectual outputs (IOs), seven multiplier events (E), and four key results (Fig. 23.4).

**Fig. 23.3** HOME's working groups

**Fig. 23.4** HOME's, IOs, contents, and results

#### **23.3 Project Advancement**

#### *23.3.1 The European Student Accommodation Quality Labels (IO1)*

The initial phase of the research focused on investigating national standards and practices in the student accommodation sector and the feasibility assessment of the ensuing labeling exercise. By analyzing national legal frameworks, an examination of minimum legal requirements for the private rental sector and, where existing, for student accommodation in the countries involved in the project—Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—has been conducted. The information was mainly found on governments' databases, official Ministries' Web sites, and legal handbooks. In addition, to overcome language barriers in the research on some EU countries' legal requirements, a questionnaire on national legal frameworks for the private rental sector has been designed and distributed within the UIPI network. The questionnaire aimed to built a clearer comparative picture of legal requirements for private accommodation while verifying the research outcome.

Subsequently, the second part of the research examined existing labels or assessment methods for student accommodation in Europe and related best practices, such as "Lokaviz label" in France.8 After screening, identifying, and evaluating all services, needs, and features that might be relevant for devising the labels, a set of six EAQLs have been designed to embrace three main factors: (1) be welcoming to an international target market; (2) be accessible to people with disabilities; (3) be univocal in terms of identification of the accommodation features. The EAQLs certify some of the most relevant quality aspects of the student accommodation: (1) international friendliness, (2) wheelchair-accessible, (3) room quality, (4) super-secure, (5) well-equipped, and (6) premium accommodation. Each label is identified through an icon, a criterion, and a list of indicators (Fig. 23.5). Each icon has a different number of indicators conceived to identify the specific needs of the students and associated with the defined criteria. The goal of providing the students with a selected, comprehensive, but not excessively detailed list of choices during their accommodation search guided the identification of this limited group of icons and indicators.

Through a bottom-up process, housing providers were involved in the EAQLs validation actively participating to multiplier events (E1 and E2), focus groups, and surveys.

<sup>8</sup> https://www.lokaviz.fr/data/logement\_etudiant\_crous\_charte\_20120604\_1.pdf.

**Fig. 23.5** HOME's European Accommodation Quality Labels (EAQLs)

### *23.3.2 Digital Data Standard (DDS) for Student Accommodation (IO2) and Public Application Programming Interface (API) Public (IO3)*

A DDS for student housing-related data has been developed to achieve a univocal way of gathering and structuring the accommodation information of all European-wide housing providers and intermediaries. By making housing providers and intermediaries adhere to the created data standard, the HOME application can ensure the correct entitlement of EAQLs to the accommodations and smooth integration to the HOME interface.

A first version of the DDS has been created by mapping all the student housing data of sixteen large student housing providers or intermediaries across Europe. This process allowed identifying the most important and widespread data used within the student housing sector in Europe, which, together with the necessary data elements to identify and entitle the quality labels, formed the first version of this DDS. The student housing data have been delivered univocally according to the DDS. The project set up a structured database containing all the accommodation data from all connected housing providers and intermediaries. On top of this database, an API is created; it will enable applications within the Erasmus environment to pull the data from this database and use it to present the accommodations' information, including the EAQLs. All the elements within the HOME application are open-sourced, ensuring a wide future dissemination within the Erasmus environment.

Both private and public housing providers validate the DDS and the technical systems. To ensure that the technical system developed under IO2 is consistent with students' and housing providers' expectations, as well as the European Commission's requirements. The partners involved in that IO embarked on an informal *validation process* which consisted of consulting private housing providers and market intermediaries as well as public housing providers (i.e., universities with student accommodation facilities) on the validity of the DDS and the technical feasibility of the API requirements. HousingAnywhere and EUF have carried out this validation process. The former contacted six of Europeans largest private housing providers, and eight public universities across Europe and one national network of student service providers.

Currently, the vetting process results are being internally discussed, analyzed, and validated. The main purpose of this process focused on: ensure that the system is aligned with the reality of the student accommodation field and gather a qualitative first validation of IO2's technical results.

#### *23.3.3 Multiplier Events (E) and Dissemination Activities*

In 2020, the Multiplier Event E1 introduced the promotion of the EAQLs to 25 European stakeholders (Fig. 23.6). HOME was also presented during the Erasmus+ App major conference of March 2022 by EUF with the cooperation of ESN reaching 50 stakeholders in the field of international mobility in Europe. In 2021, the dissemination was scaled up using the first deliverables produced and focusing on the scope of HOME in light of the pandemic to connect with potential end-users and student housing representatives with a specific focus on IO1, while on Spring 2022 communications started focusing on the DDS under IO2.

In the HOME web site,9 which obtained 7,200 views, news items were produced concerning the project's key developments, events, and webinars. Moreover, to foster

<sup>9</sup> https://thehomeproject.eu/.

**Fig. 23.6** HOME's project multiplier events

the visibility of the results of IO1 as well as comprehension of the quality labels a total of nine videos have been developed.

Dissemination activities include social media communication saw the launch of the first campaign on IO1's results, created and managed by ESN, creating one video per quality label, and launching it throughout the duration of a few months. The campaign reached 40,000 people, and recently, a second campaign was launched focusing on the DDS (IO2). Partners have also cooperated to apply to relevant conferences like EAIE on a yearly basis. The next conference will be hosted by the Politecnico di Milano where HOME project final results will be presented to about 60 European entities such as HEIs, students' representatives and NGOs, and housing providers.

#### **23.4 Preliminary Results**

The project's outreach activities reached around 50,000 stakeholders by webinars, multiplier events, and communication campaigns. As a result, key European stakeholders involved in student accommodation sector provide positive feedback and a high level of interest. HOME's outreach results are to be considered in the context of niche targeting communication to ensure that the involved stakeholders engage more actively with the project during its lifecycle and after it. Moreover, synergies with the Erasmus+ App team are being implemented to further boost the project integration beyond the engagement phase once the technical solutions will be fully functional. During outreach activities, one of the main challenges has been: translating the technical project's contents into accessible information for a broad audience; summarizing the HOME's solutions clearly and accurately; upgrading HOME's solutions to the European student housing has already been achieved successfully.

The achieved preliminary results can be summarized as below: (1) Definition six targeted European Accommodation Quality Labels (EAQLs) to support and simplify the choice of online student accommodation; (2) The setup of the EAQLs; (3) Successful dissemination of the EAQLs; (4) First version of the Digital Data Standard (DDS); (5) Groundwork for the technical architecture needed to gather, store, and export housing data; (6) Validation of the DDS and a public Application Programming Interface (API) requirements by private and public student housing providers across Europe.

The consequent project activities will focus on integrating HOME's accommodation module interface with the Erasmus+ App, developing the educational materials and the multiplier toolkit for housing providers, universities, and students.

The Covid-19 pandemic strongly impacted the project's development. Due to the several emergency conditions in the countries involved in the project, all activities stopped for six months. Therefore, the HOME project has obtained an extension, and will be completed by the end of 2022.

#### **23.5 Final Remarks**

The HOME project is a preliminary attempt to identify, standardize, and systematize different aspects of European student mobility.

Based on the difficulties and challenges encountered during its development, the research has also allowed focusing on a knowledge overview of some critical aspects of temporary housing for students in Europe concerning accommodation adequacy. Nevertheless, an effective strategy to tackle this phenomenon at the European level still needs to be addressed.

Three factors are particularly evident:

• In addition to the difficulties of integration with local languages and rental procedures or regulations in the countries of the Union, finding an understandable rental contract, also in English, might be complicated and untrustworthy for both parties involved, students and landlords. The lack of institutional support in administrative and legal aspects and the provision of a recognized international rent contract for mobile students' accommodation remains one of the most uncovered topics at the local and European levels. Intercultural awareness is an essential precondition for smooth integration and mutual growth in all the European countries involved in the Erasmus+ Programme.

The HOME project's experimentation and innovation contribution to the digitalization and standardization of advanced accommodation services in support of international mobility is just one of the possible examples of the *digital transition* to purse the strategic objectives of the Erasmus+ Programme. Once operational, HOME will also contribute to achieving the following macro-strategic project goals:

#### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Part II Session | Technology**

The ongoing evolution of Industry 4.0 has inevitably made preservation and improvement of the existing ecosystem a key factor in the development of our constructed environment. As a result, processes and systems of production were radically restructured, orienting the technological innovations of the digital era toward decarbonization while, at the same time, supporting new paradigms of social living.

The green and digital transition has brought forth objectives and solutions that radically interfere with existing methods for planning, developing, and producing goods and services, as well as with utilization of the energy and material resources whose chief consumer is the constructed environment.

The new technologies are meant to transform the system of habitation and the urban context by integrating ICT systems with technical spaces and elements, as well as artificial intelligence and the robotizing of connected and collaborative construction processes, both in production facilities and worksites.

These innovations can provide users and civil society with an improved quality of life, both indoors and in urban settings, channeling scientific development to establish an effective culture of sustainability, reuse, and safety.

The session promotes discussion of the impact of new technologies of design and manufacturing on the construction of buildings and the urban environment, in addition to examining the potential side-effects of the new models of habitation on the quality of life and people's perception of the same.

### **Chapter 24 Technologies for the Construction of Buildings and Cities of the Near Future**

**Eugenio Arbizzani**

**Abstract** The objectives and solutions that become necessary, within the green and digital transition, can radically interfere with existing methods for designing and producing buildings and portions of cities. The "factory" and the "construction site" were one and the same thing, in the production of buildings, up until the seventies of the last century. Following the advent of prefabrication, the factory has gradually been separated from the construction site, to the point where industrial manufacturing now accounts for much of the production value of buildings through the dry-assembly of factory-made products and components. The development of enabling technologies involves knowledge-intensive technologies associated with a high level of research and development, rapid innovation cycles, substantial investment costs and highly qualified jobs. The development of this field could produce a new chain of industrial services for companies based in our country.

**Keywords** Factory-made building components · Smart robot assembly systems · Enabling technologies · Hybrid structural systems · Man–machine active interaction

### **24.1 Introduction**

In the green and digital transition currently underway, the objectives and solutions that become necessary can radically interfere with existing methods for designing and producing buildings and portions of cities, seeing that they have to optimize the use of energy resources and the flows of materials, whose largest single consumer is the built environment.

The ongoing evolution of Industry 4.0 towards 5.0 has inevitably made the preservation and improvement of the existing ecosystem a key factor in the development of our constructed environment. As a result, processes and systems of production need to be radically restructured, orienting technological innovations of the digital

E. Arbizzani (B)

Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2023

E. Arbizzani et al. (eds.), *Technological Imagination in the Green and Digital Transition*, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29515-7\_24

era towards decarbonisation, while, at the same time, supporting new paradigms of social living.

The green and digital transition has brought to the fore objectives and solutions that radically interfere with existing methods for the planning, design and production of goods and services, as well as with the utilization of energy and material resources.

#### **24.2 Building Factory Versus Construction Site**

In the production of buildings, the "factory" and the "construction site" were one and the same thing up until the seventies of the last century. Fifty years later, in Tokyo, the dismantling of the Nakagin Capsule Tower by Kisho Kurokawa is underway.<sup>1</sup> That iconic building was the result of the Japanese Metabolist utopia, whose goal was to arrive at the industrial, off-site production of housing modules designed to colonize buildings equipped with the most up-to-date technologies, in accordance with pre-established maintenance programs and planned life cycles.

The history of this building, and of built architecture in general, proceeded fortunately, in my opinion—in other directions. These proved more respectful of the cultural context of cities, but also less aware of the need for production with more sustainable environmental impacts and—even more importantly—of the advantages of taking into consideration, in the design process, the optimal use of resources, as well as their eventual recycling at the end of their life cycles.

The fact is that, following the advent of prefabrication, the factory has gradually been separated from the construction site, as over the last 30 years an increasingly evolved industrial manufacturing sector has developed, to the point where it now accounts for much of the production value of buildings through the dry-assembly of factory-made products and components.

With the advent of robotization, it is easy to imagine that our sector's production cycle will undergo further transformations. However, it should be emphasized that urban context and cultural heritage will always constitute an "unicum" whose social and cultural value cannot simply be reproduced. The "second machine age"—referred to as "Industry 5.0" in the programs of the European Commission—is unlikely to see machines prevail over the work of humans, though there will be substantial changes in methods of design and in interactions between man and his built environment.<sup>2</sup>

This revolution will be significant enough to lead to an evolutionary change in the direction of a new collective imagination capable of allowing us to conceive albeit unconsciously—of new and unpredictable scenarios for the development of interactions between man, machines and the built environment.

New technologies are designed to transform the system of habitation and the urban context by integrating ICT systems with technical spaces and components, as well

<sup>1</sup> Cfr: https://www.greyscape.com/nakagin-capsule-tower-preservation-and-restoration-project/.

<sup>2</sup> Cfr: https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/industry-50-towards-more-sustainable-resilient-and-humancentric-industry-2021-jan-07\_en.

as with artificial intelligence and the robotization of connected and collaborative construction processes, both in production facilities and at work sites.<sup>3</sup>

These innovations can provide users and civil society with a better quality of life in indoor and urban environments while orienting scientific advances towards an effective culture of sustainability, reuse and safety.

For this reason, there is now an unavoidable need to balance the demand for innovative production systems able to guarantee the quality and cost-effectiveness of projects with the obligation to preserve the environmental heritage, which otherwise the planet risks tragically losing.

The topics of the session were specifically designed to maintain the connection between research on the industrialization of the construction sector and that on the development—sustainable, human-centric and resilient—of the environment to be built in the near future.

The technology session presented three short interviews on these topics, both to introduce the theme of the latest research and to outline a vision of the discipline that draws meaning from its origins, so as to proceed even further, towards a scenario which appears to lay the groundwork for a thoroughgoing change.

In the first interview, Yotto Koga, a young software designer and researcher at the Autodesk Robotics Laboratory in San Francisco, discusses his research on "smart robot assembly systems".<sup>4</sup>

In the second interview, Professor Fabrizio Schiaffonati, one of our principal schoolmaster of discipline, is asked to lay out his vision of the relationship between the factory and the construction site, as well as the future role of design.5

In the last interview, architect Sara Codarin, who earned her Ph.D. at the University of Ferrara with a thesis on "Building Robots",6 and is now an assistant professor at Lawrence Technology University, College of Architecture and Design, illustrates her research on robots in higher education.

Also invited to the Technology Session, in the role of discussant, was Francesco Leali, full professor at the Enzo Ferrari Department of Engineering of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and Dean of the Master's Program in Advanced Automotive Engineering and Coordinator of the Unimore Automotive Academy project.

The Master's Degree Programme in Advanced Automotive Electronic Engineering is an interuniversity, international course of study established as a collaborative initiative of the Universities of Bologna, Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia and the University of Parma, working together with the world's most prestigious automotive companies headquartered in Italy.

<sup>3</sup> Arbizzani, E. (2017). Informatizzazione nel processo di trasformazione dell'ambiente costruito. In: Civiero P. (Ed.). *Tecnologie per la riqualificazione. Soluzioni e strategie per la trasformazione intelligente del comparto abitativo esistente*. Maggioli Editore, IT: Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna. 4 Cfr.: https://www.universal-robots.com/case-stories/autodesk/.

<sup>5</sup> Cfr.: Schiaffonati, F. (2021). *Lettera a un aspirante architetto.* Milan, IT: Lupetti.

<sup>6</sup> Cfr.: Codarin, S., (2020). *Innovative Construction Systems within Building Processes. An Approach to Large-scale Robotic Additive Layer Manufacturing for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.*  Thesis for an International Doctorate in Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Ferrara.