Towards a Digital Twin for Buildings IAQ and Thermal Comfort Monitoring

Several studies have proven the impact of the quality of indoor environmental conditions on human professional and cognitive performances. Additionally, building energy efficiency and indoor comfort have attracted increasing interest, encouraging the implementation of advanced digital technologies and platforms for a more efficient management of buildings. In this context, this study proposes a new framework for an effective BIM-IoT integration leading to a nearly Digital Twin (DT) relying on a BIM model equipped with regularly-generated IEQ reports summarizing statistics from real-time collected data to support facility managers’ decision-making. Despite the relevant literature on the subject, the proposed methodology introduces some novelties, as monthly results of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort evaluation are provided by open HTML reports automatically generated through a Python 3.10 code from sensor data. These reports are easily readable without needing any external platform to be visualized and are directly accessible through BIM models. The proposed methodology has been validated on a pilot case study, thus proving its efficiency, effectiveness, and robustness in terms of automation level, interoperability, adaptability, reliability, accuracy in data visualization, and management. The study shows promising results but also some issues that could be addressed through further development of the research.