Smart digital campus UniTO: data gathering and visualisation to support sustainability and indoor comfort

Abstract

This research aims to identify and investigate the best digital tools to improve indoor comfort conditions and sustainability through energy efficiency enhancement in educational buildings, integrating data gathered from sensors. By leveraging an existing asset management platform that integrates Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), data from Internet of Things devices were linked to the BIM model of a test case building creating a digital shadow in order to gather real-time data on indoor conditions, including temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels. The methodology enables continuous evaluation of the building’s state of usage and calls for automatic and frequent updates of data. The digital shadow can display current usage conditions and alarms when conditions exceed what is comfortable, and it allows for immediate feedback through colours based on the internal detected conditions. The platform can be used with business intelligence tools to support strategic choices and enable future innovations, including machine learning techniques to estimate building occupancy and identify any deviations from expected usage patterns. This study presents a promising workflow for creating sustainable and comfortable educational buildings, which could be replicable and scalable in the future.