Re!magining Cities With Digital Twins

This is an excerpt from the publication by Re!magining Cities Foundation. An attempt has been made to explain the potentials of a "phased approach" to Digital Twin deployment that help accelerate smarter & greener built environments and communities. They will help make better decisions and reap better benefits.
The three initial areas of Digital Twin Phase One would include:
1. Energy Optimization
2. Health & Well-being
3. Space Optimization
Re!magining Cities is quite active in the proptech space to better understand how the real estate community is adopting technology to improve the performance of their assets. And want to combine these areas with some of the objectives of Smart Cities so that they can also be actively engaged in the development of Digital Twins in their local jurisdictions. For a smarter and greener future!
Global leaders in real estate are rapidly adopting technologies to better manage their real estate assets. Enhancing the end-user experience becomes the new mantra of how to stay competitive while driving down operational costs and maximizing profits. Co-working is changing the way offices look, operate, and managed. Proptech plays an essential role in the evolution of space as a service. More reliance on technology in real estate raises more privacy and cybersecurity concerns while utilizing Big Data analytics for decision making is becoming a norm. This rapid growth and complexity of the landscape makes understanding the opportunities and navigating the risks in Proptech an ever more challenging endeavour.
Energy Optimization
Buildings are responsible for nearly 40% percent of global energy consumption. The built environment will go through unprecedented expansion as 60% of the buildings that will make up the world’s fastest-growing cities by 2050 are yet to be built. Driving down energy use in buildings will be one of the crucial items in lowering GHG emissions. It will help to battle Climate Crisis and create sustainable liveable cities. There are several incentives for the real estate sector in optimizing the energy usage in their portfolios:
• saving money by driving energy cost down
• optimizing assets’ performance and reducing maintenance cost
• increasing profit and improving valuation
• reducing peak load and detecting malfunctions and defaults
• freeing up capital from building efficiency for other strategic investments
Health & Well-Being
Smart cities are focusing a lot of their services toward improving the lives of its citizens. According to several research studies people spend about 90% of their time indoors. The pollutant levels can be higher indoors than outdoors. A 2015 joint study between Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University, showed a direct link between cognitive function and indoor environment. The study tested employee performance in environments with “healthy” and “unhealthy” air. In healthy air conditions, the results yielded performance improvements valued up to £11,500 in additional revenue per employee per year.
Employee productivity and cognitive ability can increase by up to 50% in a “healthy” building environment. Addressing Health & Well-being in buildings improves peoples’ health and efficiency. It helps building owners and managers attract and retain tenants and employees. Those employees have less “sick days” and enjoy a better working environment provides them with the comfort of an indoor air quality, thermal, lighting and ventilation controls.
Space Optimization
With rapid urbanization, cities need to deal with an incredible influx of people moving into cities to live, work, and play. The UN estimates that approximately 1.5 million people move into cities per week. With a scarcity of land and resources, building more buildings to accommodate the growing urban population becomes even a bigger challenge. Thus, there is a need for technology to help us be more efficient in the use of our resources.

CASE STUDIES
ENERGY OPTIMIZATION
Switch Automation
www.switchautomation.com

Switch Automation is a smart building platform that drives energy efficiency, equipment optimization and occupant comfort for existing Real Estate Portfolios. Over 2500 buildings around the world utilize their solution to save on energy and equipment maintenance costs. Switch Automation was deployed by Oxford Properties, a global real estate company that manages over $45 billion of real estate assets on behalf of its co-owners and investment partners, with a global portfolio spanning over 60 million square feet. Switch Automation have documented $430k in savings across 7 sites for the last 12 months. That equates to an excess of $6M in portfolio value with an applied cap rate of 7% for retail spaces.
Within the first three months on the Switch Platform, Oxford uncovered equipment and building optimization opportunities totalling $160,000 in annual operating expense savings. The opportunities identified in 3 short months increasingly saved Oxford Properties operational costs and increasing team efficiency.
Enertiv
www.enertiv.com

MetaProp Portfolio company Enertiv showcases how their customer gets maximum value, and save time and money, using their solution. Enertiv is a property tech company that creates hardware and software to track the performance and energy usage of building systems. The company drives net operating income (NOI) growth in commercial real estate portfolios by bringing a data-first approach to operational workflows such as maintenance and repairs, energy management, tenant billing, vendor management, and capital investments. Laramar selected two buildings in the Chatsworth Business Park, a 230,000 square foot office complex in Southern California, as the site for the first phase of deploying Enertiv’s technology.
Enertiv installed sensors to track the performance of 43 pieces of critical equipment for a nominal one-time implementation fee and a recurring annual subscription. As part of the standard process, the Enertiv client success team on boarded Laramar’s operations team on how to use the platform with a focus on their specific goals. Within weeks, the Enertiv Platform began firing automated notifications to the on-site staff alerting them to malfunctioning equipment.
RESULTS:
The maintenance insights were coupled with a series of energy-saving optimizations that combined to $75,000 in annual savings, a potential 440% return on the first year’s cost of ownership.

HEALTH & WELL-BEING
Awair
www.getawair.com
Indoor air quality can be five to ten times worse than outdoor air. Good outdoor air typically has C02 at 250 to 350 parts per million. At 2,000 to 5,000 symptoms includes headaches, sleepiness, increased heart rate, and slight nausea. One of the leading companies that help improve the air we breathe indoors is Awair. It’s an indoor environment management solutions company that works with businesses across the world to equip them with real-time, actionable environment data to achieve their financial, productivity and wellness goals. The company produces an Indoor Environmental Monitoring system that enables to gather and track IAQ data from millions of data points across 2,000 cities and 60 countries.
Awair tracks 7 key factors that affect air quality: chemicals, dust, CO2, humidity, light, noise and temperature. The chemicals that Awair tracks are commonly referred to as VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. It is an umbrella term used to describe any organic chemical that evaporates easily at room temperature. The VOCs detected by Awair include Formaldehyde, Methane, Ammonia, Ethanol, Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen gas, Hydrogen sulphide, Toluene, and more. Higher levels of VOCs can include irritation of eyes and nasal passages, nausea and headaches, lethargy and malaise, rash, skin irritation, and eczema.
With advanced predictive analytics, Awair solutions help their customers, property managers and building operators make smarter data-driven decisions in real-time.
4D Monitoring is a UK based company that provides comprehensive building monitoring solutions that enable its clients to have complete visibility of their building environments, with a focus on plant and boiler rooms.
CHALLENGE:
The company provides their clients with data on energy usage, but the clients were interested in more robust IAQ data. They expressed interest in verifying their indoor air quality, but many could not afford to apply for popular certifications. In addition, they preferred monitoring solutions that make little noise and are designed to fit their aesthetic.
SOLUTION:
The 4D Monitoring team integrated Awair Omni into their services and began installing Omnis in client projects.
Since February 2018, 4D Monitoring has leveraged Awair for Business to enhance its client experience.
• The Awair Dashboard and API allow 4D Monitoring to easily manage data for multiple clients at a time.
• Omni is offered to clients as a cost-effective IAQ monitoring solution that verifies their building sustainability needs at a fraction of the cost of a certification application.
• 4D Monitoring is able to expand their service, leveraging findings collected by their clients’ new in-depth IAQ data to provide actionable insights and building performance reviews.

SPACE OPTIMIZATION
Saving floor space in the Outlook building of Microsoft:
Microsoft is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington and offices throughout the world. In the Netherlands their primary office is in the building called ‘The Outlook’ located at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam. In 2018 the building interior was completely renovated with spaces that are designed and arranged in such a way that it provides building users with an optimal working experience. To increase this experience a smart building network was required together with areas for concentration, relaxation, telecommunication, meetings and of course flexible working.
Microsoft wanted to use smart technology to facilitate and improve both the employee- and the visitor experience. From the moment people set off to come to The Outlook and park, to receiving guests, being able to work comfortably and host a meeting, through to their departure.
To realize this open and intelligent office environment, Microsoft wanted to have insight into the actual usage & occupancy of the building before remodelling to be able to optimize the design.
SOLUTION:
To answer both the question of insight prior to remodelling and to provide a smart building infrastructure, the bGrid® solution was implemented in two phases. In phase one a temporary setup was created intended to map building usage and environmental parameters; no connection was made to existing building management systems. During the renovation, phase two started where the bGrid® solutions was fully integrated within the complete building making connections to the (new) building systems. This made it possible to control light and temperature (automatically and by the users) and increase the personal comfort.
With the occupancy information gathered at phase 1, Microsoft decided to decrease the amount of floor space for its new building. They reduced their floor space from 12.000 to 8.000 m2, resulting in an annual saving of about 1,4 Million Euro. This can have an impact on the balance sheet of 10,8 Million Euro as displayed in the Table below. The leftover space in the building was transferred to Spaces, a company specializing in Office as a Service Solutions. As the bGrid® solution was rolled out throughout the entire Outlook building, Spaces also uses the Smart Building capability to offer an attractive and modern office. Furthermore, Microsoft decided to create more workspace open to the public and less workspace for employees only.
In phase 2 the personal comfort of the building went up by environment control based on real-time measurements and by user preferences. Also, the usage of all chosen areas (areas for concentration, relaxation, telecommunication, meetings and of course flexible working) are monitored to be used for potential adaptions during their rental contract. With the optimized building Microsoft noticed an increase in health and focus of its employees and more people who wanted to join the company and work in the smart building.
The Outlook: From the new world of working with 11.500m2 for 700 employees and 30% workspace open to the public and 70% workspace for employees only - to a workplace transformation with 8.500m2 for 1000 employees and 70% workspace open to the public and 30% workspace for employees only.
Credits: Chungha Cha, Co-Founder & Chair, Tsatsral Baatar, Global Proptech Research, www.re-cities.oRG