DigiBUILD toolbox allows users to optimise building’s energy consumption and user comfort as well as survey the climate resilience of buildings.
Objective
DigiBUILD aimed to put property data into more efficient use and make buildings smarter. The project resulted in a toolbox ideal for streamlining building operations, allowing for easier data acquisition and use, optimisation of energy consumption and indoor conditions as well as the assessment and improvement of climate resilience.
Duration, partners and funding
DigiBUILD ran for three years until the end of May 2025. The project was funded by Horizon Europe. The total budget was €4,999,814, of which Forum Virium Helsinki’s share was €329,375. An Italian entity Engineering served as the project’s coordinator. The other partners included:
- National Technical University of Athens
- Fundación CARTIF
- Università Politecnica delle Marche
- CNET Centre for New Energy Technologies, S.A.
- Veolia
- IRON Thermoilektriki Anonymi Etaireia
- Focchi Spa
- Municipality of Iași
- Sitta Research, S.R.L.
- Électricité de France
- Emotion, S.R.L.
- Institute for European Energy and Climate Policy, Stichting
- Cware ApS
- Euroheat & Power
- UCL University College London
Forum Virium Helsinki’s role
The role of Forum Virium Helsinki was to carry out one of the ten project pilots and support the development of the solutions. The pilot site in Helsinki was the Urban Environment House in Kalasatama.
Services piloted in Helsinki:
- Property data quality assurance and improvement
- Electricity consumption monitoring and prediction
- User comfort improvement through indoor temperature and indoor air quality optimisation
- Building climate resilience assessment and improvement
- Easy accessibility and collection of building’s data and information in one place through a ‘Digital Building Logbook’.
Benefits for Helsinki
The project showed that Helsinki already has a relatively large amount of available data from its properties, which can be used to improve energy efficiency and other property-related decision-making.
The DigiBUILD project helped to better utilise this data and comprehensively optimise the operation of properties:
- Data quality assurance helped identify and repair faulty sensors.
- More precise (e.g., room-specific) energy consumption monitoring and forecasting enabled improvements in energy efficiency.
- The pilot increased understanding of optimal indoor conditions in office properties.
- Through the climate resilience tool, the pilot raised awareness and highlighted perspectives of interest to stakeholders for securing properties during climate change and extreme conditions.
Further information
DigiBUILD website
Project deliverables
The DigiBUILD project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101069658. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor CINEA can be held responsible for them.
Photo: City of Helsinki