HERITWINS. Digital twins for the circularity of building components within building conservation

There is a need for systematizing the way historic buildings’ components are shared and recycled, so that spare parts can be more easily found, visualized and reused in the renovation of historic buildings. This way not only the energy needed for re-producing them is saved, but also their residual embodied energy and cultural value is retained.

This pilot project aims at exploring the potential of digital inventories of existing historic/traditional building components for improving reuse and circularity in the sustainable management of historic buildings.

Scanning and data acquisition tools will be tested to create digital copies of old building components. The information will be then processed and integrated with qualitative data about the objects (e.g. style, building period, material).

Finally, the data will feed a database to make the information available for any stakeholders, with the possibility to integrate it in already existing databases for circularity.