Press Release

Performance-based digital twins uncover data-driven information to reduce carbon footprint

BOSTON, MA – AUGUST 3, 2023 – Today, Digital Twin Consortium® (DTC) published A Whole Systems Approach to Decarbonization across the Building Lifecycle user guide. This guide is the next in five user guides designed to assist an owner or occupier with new or existing digital twin-based building decarbonization implementations throughout the lifecycle. This guide answers the question: What is the recommended building lifecycle? The guide emphasizes how performance-based digital twins are critical to delivering a successful, sustainable, whole systems approach within the built environment.

“We must re-imagine our buildings, cities, and infrastructures as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating, and self-sustaining system-of-systems,“ said Dan Isaacs, GM & CTO of the DTC. “To realize this end goal, there must be a shift towards a regenerative, circular, low-carbon mindset where digital twins can provide significant value.”

Generations of conventional design practices, accompanied by limited levels of sustainable design, have not made an impact on limiting global carbon emissions and climate change. Organizations must employ a whole-systems approach using performance-based digital twins that addresses building systems throughout the entire lifecycle, from HVAC, plumbing, energy, water, utility sources, renewables, hours of occupancy, systems integration, sensors, and more.

Companies taking a whole-systems approach to building performance will find they can address their net-zero carbon targets and balance their energy costs with occupant comfort needs. A performance-based digital twin delivers the data-driven information they need to uncover significant energy, carbon, capital, and operational savings. Owners can also monitor and implement changes that improve air quality, comfort, and ventilation.

A performance-based digital twin employs reliable, physics-based simulation, accurately predicting operational building performance and continuously monitoring and identifying ways to improve the built environment, including:

• Improvements to building energy efficiency that can lower energy bills
• Indoor comfort and increased health and well-being of occupants
• Good environmental design that can reduce overheating risks
• Avoiding the need for retrofitting in the future
• Adapting to change while keeping high-performance levels.

Download A Whole Systems Approach to Decarbonization across the Building Lifecycle user guide for more information and a complete list of authors. DTC will publish the remaining user guides throughout the summer.

The DTC Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations Working Group (AECO) Working Group wrote the guides to offer additional detail following the publication of the whitepaper:  Decarbonizing the Built World: A Call to Action,  which outlines how to reduce carbon emissions using performance-based digital twins.

About Digital Twin Consortium

Digital Twin Consortium is The Authority of Digital Twin. It coalesces industry, government, and academia to drive consistency in vocabulary, architecture, security, and interoperability of digital twin technology. It advances digital twin technology in many industries, from aerospace to natural resources. For more information about Digital Twin Consortium, please visit our website at https://www.digitaltwinconsortium.org/.

Note to editors: Digital Twin Consortium is a registered trademark of OMG. See a listing of all OMG trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.