KIRA-digi was a national built environment digitalization spearhead project of the Finnish government carried out in 2016-2019. The project supported 138 experiments with €4.7 million in funding from the government. Participating companies invested 7.8 million in total. Here are some of the experiments that we’ve featured on AEC-Business.com.
Duuers: Better Proposals
with Less Work
Small
contractors, consultants, and design professionals have a love–hate
relationship with responding to RFPs. Duuers, a Finnish startup, wants to turn
this struggle into an inspiring experience.
Echargie: How to Make Use
of Existing Infrastructure for E-Mobility
All major
car manufacturers are committed to making hybrids and 100 % electric vehicles
(EVs). Consequently, a growing number of drivers will need sockets to charge
their vehicles. Echargie solves this problem by turning any power socket into a
smart charging station
Scaling up Building
Sustainability Assessments with BIM Model Checker Tools
Building
information models (BIMs) can provide a lot of useful information for a life
cycle assessment. However, the models have to meet certain criteria to be
usable. Bionova created a prototype to test how well a model checker could
automatically verify the quality of a BIM.
Speeding up Infrastructure
Projects with the Cloud
Infrakit, a
cloud service developed by a Finnish startup company, is accelerating
infrastructure projects both in Finland and, increasingly, abroad. Automatic
transfer of information among parties involved in a project saves time, reduces
paperwork, and facilitates the work of land surveyors. In addition to
excavators, rock drills can now also be viewed on the map.
Plehat Brings Natural
Environments into Design Tools
Natural
elements are an essential part of the built environment. However, BIM tools
offer almost no support to landscape architecture. Plehat is introducing a new
solution that helps architects and decision-makers to understand the dynamics
of nature and make smart design choices.
Better Design of HVAC
Systems with VR
Retrofitting
new technical systems into an existing building can be tricky. CTRL Reality, a
Finnish AR/VR application development company, is completing an experimentation
project demonstrating how HVAC design and installation are easier and
cost-efficient with the help of virtual reality.
Better Indoor Environments
with Real-Time IoT Data
Homes and
other properties contain an increasing number of IoT sensors and smart devices
that provide data relating to their environment. Cozify wanted to demonstrate
how that data could be used to create comfortable indoor conditions for people,
and save money while doing so.
How Algorithmic Design
Improves Collaboration in Building Design
Two
companies, A-Insinöörit and Geometria Architecture, joined forces to test
algorithmic design collaboration to see if it could solve many of today’s data
exchange problems. They found their solution could speed up the process,
eliminate many errors, and alleviate the frustration of doing updates by hand.
It could also have a positive effect on the final outcome of the project.
Taking Service Network
Planning to the Next Level
Cities and
municipalities are basically systems for delivering services for the benefit of
their citizens. An experimental project demonstrated how improving the flow of
data between these services could save a lot of time and taxpayer money.
SkenarioLabs Uses AI for
Property Benchmarking
AI
continues to be a hot topic across industries. The PropTech startup
SkenarioLabs has a data analytics solution that utilizes AI. The results have
been successful from the perspective of property owners: reliable technical
surveys that contribute to making smart investment decisions.
Testing Robotic Cleanup on
a Construction Site
A group of
people had gathered at a construction site in Vantaa, Finland, on February 25,
2019. On the floor of a large room, a robot was blinking lights, apparently
waiting for instructions on what to do next. This was the first test of an
industry-grade cleaning robot for construction sites.
Locating Construction
Equipment with IoT and Mobile Technology
It can take
hours, or even days, to find a specific scissor lift on a large construction
site – multiply that with hundreds of machines on the site and, then, you grasp
the scale of the dilemma. Three companies joined forces to test an IoT solution
that could fix the problem, cost-efficiently.
eRent: Construction
Efficiency Using Principles of the Sharing Economy
eRent has
developed a digital equipment management portal for construction equipment. At
the very heart of the concept lies the resource efficiency that can be achieved
using principles of the sharing economy.
A Portable Robot That Will
Shake the Window Cleaning Industry
A Finnish
startup wants to automate the way we clean and care for our building facades. Its
compact robot is taking the world by the storm.
AI Helps Deliver Better
Concrete More Efficiently
The
construction industry uses 13 billion cubic meters of ready-mix concrete every
year. The logistics and quality assurance of this concrete depend on legacy
technologies that are no longer sufficient for today’s needs. To address this,
Caidio is introducing AI-based solutions to help the supply chain deliver
better quality concrete more efficiently.
How AI Can Become a Design
Adviser
Parametrized
design software is not a recent invention. This software is based on
predetermined, fixed algorithms, leaving most of the work to the designer.
Sweco, a leading engineering consultancy, is now exploring how artificial
intelligence (AI) could take design automation in the Architecture,
Engineering, and Construction industry to the next level
How VR and AR Will Help in
Remote Expert Assistance
The speed
and quality of maintenance and repair are critical in the modern,
technology-packed built environment. Consequently, these were considered in an
experimental project that tested how remote expert assistance using VR and AR
technologies could help improve the productivity of field service.
Connecting IoT Data to BIM
Internet of
Things sensors and IoT-capable devices provide a huge amount of data from
buildings. To make this data useful and usable for research, Aalto University
is developing and testing a service that links IoT with building information
models, BIMs.
How BIM is Revolutionizing Building Control in Finland
BIM is becoming mainstream in building design, but building control is still predominantly based on paper documents and 2D drawings. A Finnish KIRA-digi experimentation project has demonstrated how BIM can speed up and improve the building permit process considerably.
Helsinki is Building a
Digital Twin of the City
The capital
of Finland first tested city modeling as long back as 1987. But the most recent
model of the Kalasatama district demonstrates the new state-of-the-art
possibilities of this technology: creation of a highly accurate digital twin of
the city.
City Development with
Interactive 3D Models
The Finnish
city of Hyvinkää has developed a unique internet service for collaborative 3D
city planning. It gives real estate owners, investors, developers, designers,
authorities, and citizens easy-to-use tools to publish their 3D plans and ideas
for the built city environment.
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