How digital engineering can help the construction sector meet its decarbonisation targets

2 Dec 2020

A new report from Asite, Smart retrofitting: The key to decarbonizing the built environment, examines how the construction industry can mitigate carbon emissions through the smart retrofitting of built assets. It responds to the construction industry's role in the Paris Agreement and focuses on the decarbonisation of existing buildings, both residential and commercial.

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The report analyses and evaluates the technologies and approaches that can be utilised to mitigate carbon emissions and provides an insight into the role of digital twins in the industry’s journey to net zero.

“The relationship between our planet and the built environment must be treated as symbiotic," says Asite CEO Nathan Doughty.

"The industries central to delivering and maintaining our built environment: architecture, engineering and construction, property management, facilities and asset management, and, technology, software, and manufacturing have a huge role to play in the advancement of net zero carbon goals and are crucial to our future.

"This report examines the challenges before us all and dives into how digital transformation and digital engineering will help us work together to achieve a resilient and sustainable built environment – for everything already built and everything we build next.”

Issues within existing buildings

The report identifies the issues within existing buildings that must be addressed to meet global goals and the barriers preventing the widespread retrofitting required to accomplish global climate targets.

The snapshot report also discusses retrofitting on a global scale, examining government and organisation policies and initiatives from around the world – including the UK, Europe, UAE, North America, Australia, and India – to offer a global perspective on the issue.

In its conclusion, the report identifies how digital engineering can help the industry overcome the presented challenges and support the delivery of retrofits at scale to facilitate the construction industry in meeting its decarbonisation goals.

Digital twins are concluded to be the future of retrofitting. They offer the most comprehensive resource for retrofitting at scale as a composite of a variety of technologies. Digital twin technology will allow the industry to achieve current goals and also future-proof buildings beyond 2050 decarbonisation targets.

To read the report in full, click here.