Digital building logbooks for smart energy efficiency and carbon neutrality

There is a current lack of consolidated repositories of data in the construction industry for built assets, to provide efficient decisions about designing, constructing, and maintaining the asset across its lifecycle. This is causing immense losses and inefficiencies in asset sustainable performance, energy efficiency and decarbonisation. This paper initially investigates the feasibility of a state-of-the-art technology-based solution for better management and sustainable performance of a building: the Construction Digital Logbook (DBL), devised to be a dynamic publicly shared repository for all relevant information about a building. Current DBL initiatives, e.g. Bedrebolig (Denmark), Madaster (Netherlands), Hausakte (Germany) etc., exhibit challenges e.g. lack of valid updated building data, fragmented data sources, erroneous data input, lack of interoperability between data exchange systems, lack of data security, and low user-friendly interface. Hence this paper delves deeper into identifying opportunities of utilising Industry 4.0 smart technologies e.g. machine learning, block chain, visual and data analytics, not just to aid resolve these challenges, but furthermore to enable deriving meaningful outcomes, patterns, trends, and predictions from its data to enhance a building’s energy performance and decarbonisation to aid in achieving carbon neutrality. To accomplish this study, we have drawn upon the expertise of a multi-disciplinary group of experts in construction, software development, visual and data analytics, building restoration, sustainability, and building Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) to identify solutions that can create Smart Construction Digital Logbooks to enhance buildings’ energy efficiency and carbon neutrality objectives.