Developing Architectural Guidelines for Digital Twins

Abstract

The concept of a ‘digital-twin’ opens up the possibility to capture an overview of the constantly shifting attributes of the building through real-time data collection that is allocated to a model rebuilt in a digital workspace. Today’s architectural applications of the concept mainly focuses on the measurement of environmental data within the building or metrics that can be associated with operational energy. This project aims to expand on digital-twin methodology with further consideration of metrics collected from the materials within the wall assembly that are associated with embodied energy; using the Nolte Center as a test subject building. A list of technologies available for digital-twin creation were created and Rhino was used to run weather-induced simulations. This brought about further exploration pertaining to the feasibility of sensor installation and representations of the data in a digital environment. Although the project initially aimed to explore the overall methodology, the early stages of creation were explored in-depth and helped to find more clarity about the feasibility of measuring various aspects. In the future, we hope to use the findings from this project to carry out a physical implementation in the Nolte Center.