On the 12th of September, 2023, the ASHVIN partners joined a meeting of a European standardisation working group preparing a technical report on Digital Twin applied in the Built environment. This report is a first step towards developing a new European standard, and it gathers use cases for deploying digital building twin technologies from different European research projects. 

What are the ASHVIN’s objectives?

ASHVIN Project is developing a digital twin solution impacting the entire value chain of the construction industry, from digital service providers to construction labour. The solution will combine an open-source Internet of Things (IoT) platform, allowing different sensing methods and integrated applications to support construction professionals in improving their projects’ productivity and resource efficiency.  On top of this technological innovation, one of the key objectives of the ASHVIN project is to contribute to the European standardisation of Digital Twin technologies; this effort is coordinated by Austrian Standards, one of the consortium members.

 

How does ASHVIN contribute in the European Standardisation of Digital Twins?

Since 2022, the ASHVIN partners have been involved in CEN  Technical Committee (TC) 442 “Building Information Modelling (BIM)” working group (WG) 9 “Digital twins in the built environment” to share results of the research from the ASHVIN demonstration sites to support future standardisation in the area. 

This working group has a running standardization project aiming to draft a technical report on  “Building information modelling — Digital twins applied to the built environment — Use cases“ (WI=00442049), and the ASHVIN partners are actively contributing to this effort. Generally, technical reports are technical reference systems developed by European standardisation bodies, and these are prepared for further standardization work e.g., European Specification (CEN/TS) or European Standard (EN) after a review phase.

This effort aims to develop a document that collates use cases of digital twins applied to the built environment, including infrastructures, in Europe. These use cases are obtained from CEN experts and related EU research projects, like ASHVIN. This document also identifies any common characteristics, with the possibility of supporting the establishment of further standardization work.

ASHVIN has provided use cases related to its research on digital twin technologies on several ASHVIN demonstration sites related to maintaining infrastructure assets with the support of digital twin technologies. These ASHVIN demonstration sites are: 

• Demo 1 – Load Tests in Railways Bridges in Spain. 
• Demo 3 – Planning and optimization of maintenance activities on airports using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Croatia
• Demo 6 – Construction of an office building in Spain.
• Demo 7 – Maintenance of a road bridge in Spain
• Use Case on Crane – Real-time Discrete Event Simulation of Crane operations

These use cases included in the WG 9 technical report specify the following aspects: 

• The main use of the Digital Twin
• Description of the Digital Twin
• Main improvements beyond the state-of-the-art 
• Replication potential

The last WG 9 meeting occurred on the 12th of September, 2023, in Paris or remotely. In this meeting, ASHVIN was represented by Stefan Wagmeister (Austrian Standards International – ASI) and Rolando Chacon (Technical University of Catalonia – UPC). 

After this meeting, Stefan Wagmeister resumed the meeting outcomes:

What are the next steps?

The formal vote on the final draft on the Technical report is expected to start 02/2024. The technical report is expected to be published in mid-2024.