DigitalLab for the Built Environment: An Integrated Approach for Upgrading Digital Skills in Technical Education

Digital twins in our project are concerned about a digital version of buildings and building use, to document, analyze and improve the physical building. Digital twin technology is rapidly transforming industries, particularly in the AEC sector, and there was a need to integrate it into education and training programs. To bridge the gap between academia and industry, the project focused on developing structured learning materials that break down complex digital twin concepts into accessible, hands-on educational content, without missing the completeness of digital twins. The goal has been to ensure that students at various levels and different study programs could learn the principles, methodologies, and applications of digital twins, preparing them for real-world technological challenges. The methodology used in Digital Twins for BE is and will in the future become even more a support for a holistic view for all activities where buildings are involved. All these activities usually are divided in different educational programs. To develop these connected, but divided disciplines, this holistic view and knowledge is needed.

The DigiLab/BE project aimed to bridge the gap between education and industry by developing engaging, hands-on learning materials that teach students and educators how to create, use, and analyze digital twins. By integrating four aspects of digital twins (3D modeling, BIM, sensors, AR/VR, IoT, and data analytics) the project also sought to bridge the gap between static representation of the building itself, and the dynamic real-time data, offering a comprehensive educational approach. The project also emphasized the development of dynamic and engaging learning materials, including videos, digital models and tutorials, making complex concepts more accessible and attractive. These resources are now available on an open online platform, ensuring broad accessibility for students, educators, and professionals. The project expanded its impact by adapting its methodologies for pre-university education, promoting STEM engagement among younger students and ensuring long-term educational benefits beyond higher education institutions. Learning material for four aspects of Digital twins is established. The project has also established two demo sites, one in Norway and one in Spain, offering open example data for the four aspects.

The activities can be divided in three parts: 1) Project organization/cooperation, 2) creating main project result – the learning material 3) promoting the results (multiplier events). 1) Project organization A couple of the partners have previous experiences in joint project, but not all. One important activity was to create a joint project team. Important activities for this: - Meeting and talking: Two physical meetings took place early in the project, one in Norway and one in Spain. - Monthly one-hour status meetings, the first Thursday every month, open for all, and with a fixed and an open part of the agenda. These status meetings become more and more important as the work continued. Several following-up meetings were carried out, for continuing discussions on more specific topics. - Joint project framework activity: The work with a common platform was the first project result team in action. Here the plans and decisions for the work was set forth. A comprehensive Handbook was developed to guide the creation of digital twin learning materials, ensuring consistency across project results. All partners have allocated resources to participate. This was important discussions, and very valuable as a common platform for the project activities. After project end is must be admitted that the content of the produced handbook (PR1 result) was as good as we managed based on the limited project experiences the first half a year of the project. The lessons learned during the project have added important experiences to the content. But the handbook was decided not “re-opened”, and might have a bit limited value. - Collaborative work on the first digital twin aspect, the capture of the static building information. Here also all partners have resources allocated. An important (bi-)result of the activity was a first test on the handbook. 2) Creating the learning material. Creating the learning material was the main result, and thus the most important activity. Early in the project is was realized that the four aspects of digital twin originally set up with four project result teams, was not sufficient. There was also a need for a common learning material infrastructure, keeping all the data and information on the physical twins (the demo sites) as a common resource for the learning material. Creating learning material was organized in 4 project result teams, covering the four identifies aspects of Digital twins. For each team, one partner was appointed the leader, mainly based on knowledge to the aspect. But all the partners have also been allocated resources to follow up, partly as a quality assurance, partly as a mean to ensure compatibility between the project results. The project result teams developed detailed learning materials covering sensorization, VR/XR support, IoT integration, and data collection processes. The activated with goal to create the learning material follow the structure of the learning material consists of • activities for each of the Project results (sum 4 parts, connected to the selecte four aspects of digital twin) • one activity describing an introduction part needed as background for each PR part. Resources for this activity was taken from the four funded parts. • One activity describing the project infrastructure, with demo sites and example data. Resources for this also taken from the funded 4 parts. A consequence of this learning material structure is that the work with each of the parts in the learning material became a close integration between all the PRs, often making it challenging to distribute working hours to specific PRs. When the project approached the end, it was realized that our solution for production of learning material did not require that much “external support” as indicated in the application for Exceptional Cost. It was then decided to transfer overshooting funding from Exceptional cost to PRs, and put more effort in the creation and developing of the web site for the learning material. This transfer of resources ensure similar effect on the project result as hiring in external to do this job. 3) Promoting the results. The team compiled insights from workshops, partner feedback, multiplier events, online training sessions, and presentations at international conferences, ensuring a holistic review of the DigiLab/BE methodology. Multiple training sessions were conducted to introduce students at the partner education institutions and professionals to digital twin technologies, fostering engagement and practical application. Multiplier events is used as a mean to spread the results in national and wider arenas. Al though merged into only four multiplier events, one for each country, at least a couple of the multiplier events consisted of several meetings. The promoting activities was early 2024 extended to include a presentation at the ECPPM 2024 conference in Dresden, Germany. To fully present the project and fulfil the conference requirements, two academic papers where produced, oral presented at the conference, and will be published in the conference proceedings.

Concrete outputs from the project. A comprehensive digital twins learning platform was developed, hosting structured educational materials, tutorials, and interactive exercises. This platform provides open access to students, educators, and industry professionals, enabling them to learn how to apply digital twins in real-world scenarios. Links to the result are found at the Erasmus Project result web site. The idea has been to cover multiple levels of learning: - Beginners, with limited experiences in the topic, mainly interested in reading and looking at pre-defined demos - Advanced beginners, also interested in downloading software and data, and running the exercises on own equipment - Explorers, users of the material wanting even more. Based on the available project result, in special the documentation of the demo sites, set up own demo sites, or own “digital lab”, is possible. - Researchers: This is well experienced users mainly searching for relevant test data. These kind of material are found in the DigiLab/BE Infrastructure part. As the level of experience move from the top (beginners) to the bottom (researchers) the relevance of the theory decreases, and the relevance of available open data, increases. This division into these levels are to some degree complementary to other classification of learners. One is the EQF framework also important in the project, where the produced material in the project is designed to fit in the EQF 4 (“upper secondary”), 5 (“University Bachelor”) and 6 (“University Master”). A second classification is to adopt to learners with fewer possibilities. This is not the primary aspect, but project results will help at least the groups of non-individual-based fewer possibilities. A third classification is the gender. The project result does not distinguish between genders, and we believe is will be of same, high relevance for all genders, and support continuing STEM enthusiasm. The main project result is “learning material”. An alternative term is “course”. “The term “course” has several meanings, depending on use. On a web site, a piece of self-study material can be termed a course. In a university context a course is usually a formal part of a study, with important formal requirements, related to among others entrance requirements, learning environment, student supervising and grading. The goal of DigiLab/BE is to produce learning material to be used as part of such educational program. The produced learning material can support a wide variety of goals, from just the intro/view level to the creation of new own DTs (exploitation level). The learning material itself have no explicit recommendations on how a potential university course administrator/teacher should use the material. University course administrators are used to define courses and adapt learning material to course goals. It is supposed to be easier to include pure learning material in a specific institutions LMS (learning management system) than some kind of template course would be.” (sited ECPPM24-paper) The parts of the learning material are: - The DigiLab/BE infrastructure: Two fully functional digital twins were created (one in Spain and one in Norway), serving as real-world demo cases for students to interact with and analyze live sensor data. - The learning material. The course material (4 dedicated parts for each digital twin aspect and one additional intro part) consists of theory and exercises. The project had put limited resources in the theory presentation. There are lots of resources available in online and printed material for this, and the resources in the DigiLab/BE project would never match this. The most valuable parts of the learning material are the open example data and the exercises suggesting low-cost software and using the open data. More on the Digilab/BE infrastructure and the demo sites. As written above, this is believed to be the most valuable results of the project. Digital Twins for BE is a rather practical topic, the learning material should be the same. The demo sites are intended to show how the four selected aspects of digital twins together might give a more complete digital twin. Digital descriptions of the demo site buildings are available. Based on among others the security considerations for open data the content of these files is mainly “what is visible for visitors”, i.e. not what is hidden by walls and closed doors. For traditional building purposes, much more details are needed. Several Arduino-based sensor systems were installed at the Spanish and Norwegian demo sites. Of similar security considerations as referred to above, the sensors are designed to collect data on temperature, humidity, CO₂ levels, and more. The available Arduino solutions are very good at explaining which sensor units are available and how to use install them. Setting up dashboard is also fully covered by Arduino. One challenge with the Arduino solutions is the need for licenses to access their cloud services. To reduce the need for licenses, it was in the project set up a dedicated LTS (Long Time Storage) server at NTNU, reading the online stream of information from the sensors cloud service, storing them, and make them freely available as time series data. This data was made accessible via an online APIs, providing students with real-time insights. The exercises available for VR/XR use, can also give students valuable experiences with VR/XR kind of tools. As support for analysis, exercises/demos on the use of low-cost tools, mainly MsPowerBI, are available. All details on how the demo sited are implemented are available, making is possible for interested users to repeat is “at home”. Other results: Training sessions, workshops, and multiplier events across multiple countries, ensuring widespread engagement and knowledge transfer. Research dissemination and academic contributions were also key outputs. The project was showcased through conference presentations, ECPPM 2024, two academic papers available from this activity. The cooperation in the project has brought the project members closer to each other. The team have different specialties. In the project work all partners have had benefits from learning from each other.