Digital Twin for Buildings as a first step in Europe’s sustainable cities journey.

Digital Twin for Buildings as a first step in Europe’s sustainable cities journey.

Europe’s cities and sustainability

Europe’s weather patterns are changing. Fierce wind and increasingly heavy rainstorms are making winters wilder and wetter, while mercury rising above historic seasonal averages is creating drier summers. This extreme climate change-induced weather is impacting both the quality of life and the economy in cities. Since 2021, for example, cities in Germany and Belgium have been hit by floods, while forest fires in Greece and neighboring areas have seen residents being evacuated from nearby homes and hotels.

Some 75% of EU citizens live in cities and towns, which form about 4% of the EU’s land area. With the rise in weather-related incidents affecting town and city dwellers, there is now an urgent need to build disaster management and take other counter measures. At the same time, cities globally consume over 65% of the world’s energy and nearly 70% of CO2 emissions. European cities must play a critical role in the long-term reduction of the urban carbon footprint to reduce climate change.

Europe’s public sector leaders are taking up the challenge to make cities sustainable, while overseeing the immediate counter measures needed to reduce the impact of extreme weather events on cities.

At the heart of climate action is a European Commission Mission plan to build 100 climate neutral cities by 2030 to improve the quality of life for citizens. The path to climate neutral cities will change the way we live, work, and travel, and the way in which energy is produced and consumed.

Buildings are a key component in sustainability. An average building wastes about 28% of energy, while globally, buildings consume nearly 40% of all electricity and by 2025 are set to be the largest carbon emitters.

There are approximately 131 million buildings distributed across EU Member States , with estimates suggesting that around 119 million are residential and 11 million non-residential . Unsurprisingly, cities have a high concentration of non-residential buildings, with 24% of building stock in public sector use. Public administration also accounts for a major part of new constructions.

An alarming 35% of buildings have a poor EPC efficiency rating between D and G (scale A to G, with A being the most efficient), suggesting that there is considerable scope for improving existing buildings to reach the most efficient energy performance rating.

Further, nearly 41% of EU non-residential buildings were built pre-1970, before the widespread adoption of energy efficient measures. Only 9% of these buildings have been renovated. So, there is a huge opportunity to adopt energy efficient operations with retrofits and digitization that bring visibility through the measurement of real-time building operations.

A focused effort on making buildings more efficient by reducing anywhere between 5% to 20% of the energy consumption is a quick win for EU Member States. The first step to achieving this is to improve energy efficiency in buildings through operational remediation, repair, and energy efficient retrofits.

The second step is procuring clean energy and generating in-house green energy solutions to achieve zero carbon buildings. Each step towards zero carbon buildings can have a major impact on Europe’s journey to carbon neutrality. It’s a crucial journey that can be started right away. How? With Digital Twin for Buildings from Capgemini.

Digital Twin for Buildings

The ability to model, predict, and analyze the real-time operations of a building forms the key to measure and induce operational changes aimed at reducing the consumption of energy by building systems.

A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical system that can model, simulate, monitor, analyze and constantly optimize the physical world.

Capgemini’s Digital Twin for Buildings aims to bridge the physical-digital gap in real time, thereby improving performance and sustainability. It establishes a closed-loop approach to unlock value, bringing synergies in data across building systems, IoT technologies, and facility operational processes.

Digital twins provide the ability to answer questions such as “What is best?” “What if?” and “What next?”. A digital twin can not only provide visibility on how dynamic real-world systems are currently performing and propose how to improve them but can also predict how they will perform in different scenarios. For example, it can predict building equipment failure for predictive maintenance.

Modelling and analysis of this rich building data over a period of time provides invaluable insights for optimally controlling operations and optimizing energy in real-time, predicting failures, and suggesting which buildings need major energy efficient retrofits.

How does a digital twin add value?

Buildings are a complex amalgamation of multiple systems with individual controls. Each system is typically operated and maintained individually. These systems include HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), lighting systems, security and access control systems and systems for communications.

Digital twins can give a holistic view of these systems and the buildings in which they are located. Historic information, in combination with comprehensive data captured in real time, is applied to create a precise image of the facility that is constantly updated and refined. Digital twins enable transparency and deliver comprehensive insight into building operations. Importantly, they identify the best possible ways to optimize energy and improve asset performance, while maintaining the highest level of occupant comfort and safety.

What does Capgemini’s Digital Twin for Buildings provide?

Digital Twin for Buildings involves the extraction of data from existing building equipment, building management system (BMS), lighting and other systems, software, and sensors. Other relevant data such as ambient conditions, weather data, history of electricity consumption, etc. from a variety of sources can be integrated to build a holistic picture. Building floor plans, a location map and other building information modelling (BIM) data is used to enrich and create a virtual image of the building. Additional sensors can be installed for capturing data, such as occupancy, room usage, etc. All these build a comprehensive real time virtual operational model of the building. This enables seamless monitoring and a deeper understanding of how a building works.

Digital simulations: The twin scan support simulations of the building to be run using the digital replica and the linked data. One example could be running a simulation to estimate the next day’s energy consumption at varying occupancy rates, or using the next day’s meeting room reservations and typical occupancy trends to predict energy patterns.

Energy optimization: The twin should also enable energy efficiency audits to be continuously run on the building.

Fault detection and diagnosis: The data can be used to generate alarms and the model geometry can be used to study the associated systems in detail. For example, if one room is particularly cold then the model can show which section of the heating or ventilation system serves that room and search for causes in the system.

Predictive maintenance: The data and the model geometry can be used to support predictive maintenance analysis. This could be related to having vibration sensors on the technical systems, such as pumps or air handing units, and monitoring which systems regularly have excessive vibration.

CAPGEMINI’S ENERGY COMMAND CENTER (ECC) India – DIGITAL TWIN JOURNEY

Capgemini in India comprises 180,000+ team members working across 13 cities. We have already set our sustainability goals to achieve a 90% reduction in all carbon emissions by 2040. We have taken various steps in staying committed to address climate change and have our net zero targets validated against the Science Based Target initiative’s (SBTi) New Corporate Net-Zero Standard. This makes us amongst the first group of companies in our sector to have our net zero targets validated against the new SBTi standard, which is the world’s first framework for corporate net zero target setting and is in line with the level of reduction needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

We have launched a unique Energy Command Center (ECC) – an initiative for Capgemini, built on IoT based architecture for intuitive resource management. It harnesses a data-driven approach and digitalization to monitor and manage the performance of our energy assets and further aids in our sustainability initiatives across our campuses in India. Since its launch, the reduction in energy usage due to the ECC is nearly 20%.

The Energy Command Center measures and predicts various metrics like indoor air quality, energy intensity, water intensity, health of critical assets, critical operations, renewable energy generation, and the overall performance across all our energy assets. Additionally, it monitors and improves building energy and asset performance across our campuses.

Starting the journey in the public sector

Taking the important step of digitizing buildings is a key move for public administration leaders seeking to build sustainability in government-managed buildings. With Digital Twin for Buildings, this journey can begin immediately and will make a major contribution to the EU’s 100 sustainable cities Mission.


1) https://www.climate-kic.org/opinion/cities-can-lead-on-decarbonisation-and-energy-efficiency/

2) https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/cutting-global-carbon-emissions-where-do-cities-stand

3) https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/knowledge-publications-tools-and-data/publications/all-publications/100-climate-neutral-cities-2030-and-citizens_en

4) https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/construction-and-operation-buildings-account-almost-40-worlds-energy-related-co2-emissions

5) https://www.rics.org/news-insights/energy-efficiency-of-the-building-stock-in-the-eu#:~:text=Across%20the%20EU%20there%20are,other%2023%20EU%20Member%20States .

6) https://www.rics.org/news-insights/energy-efficiency-of-the-building-stock-in-the-eu

7) https://www.eesc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/files/qe-05-22-310-en-n.pdf

8) https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/qtr-2015-chapter5.pdf




Jon Singleton

Transformation Specialist, Public Sector

8 个月

3D Digital Twins are perfect for sustainability modelling and planning remediation strategies and managing energy more efficiently. Visual representation gives a far better understanding. Same can be said for the future of transport, for example planning where charging stations are best situated for grid capacity as well as forecasted take-up. Emergency Services too for route planning and improved patient care for Paramedics. Training the drivers, technicians and operators of the future too. The list is endless for 3D Digital Twin. Some great capability Capgemini is building here...

Maik Schwalm

Sustainability | Green IT | Cloud Computing | Emerging Technologies

8 个月

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