Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

ENergy aware BIM Cloud Platform in a COst-effective Building REnovation Context

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENCORE (ENergy aware BIM Cloud Platform in a COst-effective Building REnovation Context)

Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-07-01 do 2022-06-30

The main objective of ENCORE is to increase the share of renovated stock in Europe and worldwide by providing effective and affordable BIM tools that cover the whole renovation life-cycle (from data collection to project execution, and commissioning/delivery). It will tackle energy efficiency and comfort parameters, involving all the actors in the process (architecture studios, designers, constructors, tenants, or public administration), and facilitating information exchange among all the parties. To achieve this objective ENCORE proposes the creation of a system that integrates services for data acquisition from the buildings like Static LiDAR setups, and LiDAR or photogrammetry equipment embarked in UAVs. It will also allow to involve dwellers in the process by providing them with mobile tools to capture images or other in-doors information. It also provides support to architects and designers in the creation of the 3D models from the acquired data, automatically identifying and classifying the constructive elements, and allowing them to complete the model with existing BIM resources. They will be able to modify the model, presenting the energy efficiency gains of different renovation alternatives, including the impact in the overall budget. ENCORE will also provide mechanisms for the dwellers or owners to validate the project, either on-site with Augmented/Mixed Reality solutions, or on-line. Once the project is validated, ENCORE will automatically generate the work planning for the construction works, and once finalized, ENCORE will provide continuous monitoring of the energy consumption to ensure non-degradation of the renovation works. ENCORE will be validated in experimental facilities consisting of a baseline building and an experimental building that can be modified to measure the energy efficiency of the modification. Additionally, the pilot user owns several social buildings to renovate, where ENCORE can be validated in real life conditions.
The project is progressing as planned with the focus in the first 12 months being the definition of the Business Case requirements for the project technologies to improve renovation industry and to increase the share of renovated stock in Europe and worldwide, by providing effective and affordable BIM tools that cover the whole renovation life-cycle (deliverables D1.1 D1.2). These requirements have provided the basis to establish the specification of the overall ENCORE Concept, Architecture and the Pilot Case Specification (deliverables D1.3 D1.4 and D1.5) that drives the technology development tasks within the project.

In the subsequent months, the first technologies developments have been undertaken in each of the development work-packages 2 through 4. The specification and development of the project technologies, specifically in WP2 - BIM-based support tool for digital modelling and information generation, WP - BIM-aided holonic management system for building renovation and WP4 - Real-time estimation of energy and comfort performances was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Especially the work in WP5 – Integration and WP6 - Validation, Assessment at Pilot Case and Methodology design was influenced by the COVID-19 outbreak. Planned integration meetings needed to be cancel Furthermore, inaccessibility of the pilot site caused the consortium to ask EC for a project prolongation.

However, in the period month 13-18 work was also carried out in developing the early software prototypes, which will be completed in October/November 2020.

Preparatory work for the evaluations of the project technologies within the context of the Business Case has been carried out with the specification of the evaluation methods, metrics, and criteria.
The main objective of ENCORE is to boost renovation industry and to increase the share of reno-vated stock in Europe and worldwide, by providing effective and affordable BIM tools that cover the whole renovation life-cycle (from data collection to project execution, and commissioning/delivery). It will take into consideration energy efficiency and comfort parameters, involving all the actors in the process (architecture studios, designers, constructors, tenants, or public administration), and facilitating information ex-change among all the parties).

Achieving this objective, will lead to several benefits for the construction and software industries, and society in general:
- The whole renovation process will be more agile and transparent.
- The costs of the renovation process will be drastically reduced and shortened. This will make renovation projects more affordable to the owners of the housings, thus boosting the building stock renovation rati-os.
- From the software industry perspective, given that renovation projects account for 57% of all construc-tion activity [DG Internal Policies, 2016], creating a specific solution that supports and accelerates the overall buildings renovation process, and obtains effective energy savings, will be an enormous market opportunity once the main research challenges have been overcome.

In order to assure that the methods and tools to be developed meet the needs of the user companies, the project is driven by a real-world business case. The project will provide several methods and tools, aiming to bring these tools to Technology Readiness Level 6 by the end of the project.

Benefits such as novel combination of advanced technological solutions will bring considerable benefits to renovation companies in the project. The approach will allow for considerable improvements in knowledge sharing across activities in the renovation domain, as well as new and better product-service offerings addressing customer needs. The outcome will strengthen the global competitiveness of European renovation companies.
ENCORE Logo