HELIOS: Digital Twin and IoT for smart building energy management
To what extent can Digital Twins revolutionize built heritage management, making it more efficient, sustainable and data-driven? In Bologna, at the headquarters of BI-REX, the presentation of the results of the HELIOS - Holistic Energy-efficient Living and Integrated Optimization System project was held, an initiative that offers concrete answers to this question.
Promoted by a multidisciplinary consortium led by Rekeep and composed of leading industrial and academic entities, the project was co-funded by the BI-REX Competence Center call for technological innovation, with scientific supportfrom theAlma Master Studiorum-University of Bologna.
The winning strategy of the Digital Twin
Launched in 2023, HELIOS has developed a Digital Twin prototype for energy optimization of existing buildings. It is an evolution of the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach, enhanced by 4.0 technologies and IoT sensors for real-time data collection and analysis. The goal is to enable predictive and intelligent resource management, with direct benefits in terms of operational efficiency and sustainability.
Context, goals and results were shared during the event, touching on such crucial aspects as:
data-driven energy optimization,
The analysis of correlations between user habits and building performance,
The evolution toward data-driven facility management.
Against this backdrop, Marco Lotti of 4Days illustrated the operational process that led to the creation of the digital twin: from the initial point cloud survey to the development of an advanced model, managed through the Truspace platform. Thanks to this integration, data collected in the field become accessible in a unified way and can be controlled through Business Intelligence systems, thus ensuring a complete and dynamic view of building performance.
The HELIOS project demonstrates how the synergy of expertise, technology and strategic vision can translate into concrete tools for the construction industry, paving the way for a smarter and more sustainable future in real estate management.