As Europeans spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, the quality of confined spaces is a major concern for healthy indoor environments in Europe and it has a decisive impact on people's health and comfort and productivity. Indoor air quality, thermal and acoustic comfort and sufficient levels of lighting are the major determinants of the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and play an
important role in ensuring the quality of life and general wellbeing of building occupants TwinBAS seizes on the timely opportunity arising from the new revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD, the European Green Deal, and the need for green recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, to support the transition towards 'smarter' buildings with a long-term objective of creating
buildings that are comfortable and healthy for the occupants yet also energy efficient. In order to harness the potential benefits of recent technological advancements, the proposed work proposes a holistic assessment of tertiary sector buildings, resting on three main pillars: (i) indoor environmental conditions (ii) energy performance and (iii) the smartness of the building. Specifically, Digital
Twins will be developed to improve IEQ within building spaces based on both individual and collaborative user-preferences, by using real data processing with machine learning techniques and hybrid models that combines physics-based simulations. The Digital Twins enabled system will automatically inform control functions for optimizing building operations to maximise comfort and minimize energy use at each timestep. TwinBAS will be conducted at Cambridge University (UK), Engineering Department, where the Asset Management research group is currently conducting extended research focused on the development and exploitation of digital twins to improve asset management. A secondment of 4 months is also planned at the Integrated Environmental Solutions, Research and Development Ltd. (IES R&D) in Ireland