Digitalization in the construction industry holds great promise for creating more efficient, sustainable, and user-friendly buildings. By effectively leveraging technology, we can drive positive change and address global challenges in the built environment.
SINTEF has a combination of strong digital competence, access to research facilities, such as the ZEB laboratory, and in-depth knowledge of ventilation, energy use and BIM (Building Information Modeling).
SINTEF is actively involved in digitalization efforts within various areas related to buildings. These areas include ventilation, heating, indoor climate, energy flexibility, energy calculations, building information modeling (BIM) and microclimate at the neighborhood level. The overall goal is to enhance well-being indoors and outdoors, streamline construction processes, and optimize energy usage through data-driven applications.
Integration of Systems
The Construction industry is undergoing a digital transformation, but many tools still operate in isolated systems. SINTEF develops digital solutions that can easily be adopted across multiple construction projects, benefiting the entire industry and other sectors as well.
We aim to standardize data formats, structures and digital protocols to promote interoperability between different systems. This not only improves system compatibility, but also facilitates the development of advanced models and machine learning-based solutions.
Optimizing Design and Operation
Digitalization can enhance the energy efficiency of both new and existing buildings. SINTEF focuses on making existing buildings more digitalized, and extends its projects beyond individual buildings to entire neighborhoods.
- In building design, simulation tools allow for assessing building performance.
- For building operations, the goal is to optimize energy use, maintenance and overall sustainability.
Digitalization and people
Focusing on people when developing digital solutions for the AEC industry is essential for improving collaboration, operations and productivity. Our aim is that everyone in the architecture, engineering, construction and facility management (AEC/FM) industry can actively benefit from digital solutions.
The primary goal of our research area is to explore the potential of adapting the Industry 5.0 framework, which emphasizes the integration of human input, to the AEC/FM industry.
We investigate various topics, including visualization, using technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), game technology, gamification, qualitative research and chatBOT applications.
