In recent years, the increasingly urgent challenge of designing community spaces characterized by the broadest inclusiveness has led to great excitement in the search for innovative methods that establish a strong interconnection between physical and digital reality. Building information models, the internet of things and artificial intelligence are explored as technological solutions to establish a design, monitoring, and management framework for the built environment. The different data domains converge and interact with each other through the digital twin paradigm. This research is focused on the methodological implementation of a system able to detect and collect real-time data from IoT devices on the fields (physical layer), process and organize them (data processing and storage layers), and expose and visualize them through web services and BIM models (application layer). The applications refer to (i) the improvement of thermal-hygrometric and visual comfort, also reducing energy consumption, (ii) the implementation of a detection system for the activation of security procedures, and (iii) the search for assets of interest within an environment. The experimentation is conducted through a real case study which refers to the refunctionalization of a building of historical interest through the design of a smart library.
Multi-Level Information Processing Systems in the Digital Twin Era
The most challenging aspect of the scientific panorama linked to technological innovation is the search for possible connections between Representation, Man and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the complex ecosystem that defines a Digital Twin. Man plays a crucial role in facilitating communication processes both for the dissemination of knowledge and the accessibility and usability of content and for his ability to become a “sensor” and communicate information, feelings, emotions. The contribution proposes a cross-section of applications that link and decline Augmented Reality and AI differently according to a gradual scale shift from the artefact contained in a building overlooking an urban context of interest. The result is a multi-level information processing system derived from the three-dimensional matrix that links data collection, representation and visualisation techniques and tools with the cultural heri-tage – city, building, artefact – according to specific use cases.