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Business Solutions

BUILDING VIRTUALLY: REFLECTIONS ON

DIGITAL TWINS IN THE CRE INDUSTRY

Matthew Lennan This approach takes advantage of the operational desire
Innovator in Residence for remote Command & Control functionality. Currently,
Oxford Properties this level of capability is only predictably available for
HVAC systems. A better analogy is found in the automo-
THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT a good marketing term tive industry where five levels of autonomy for self-driving
that really fires up the imagination and the term digital twin cars have been defined. Similar efforts are underway to
hits the right note. It sounds pretty cool, so it must be a create a baseline for comparing digital capabilities across
useful technology—right? The concept has been rumbling buildings.
around for a while and it’s time to clear up some of the
confusion and clarify the solid opportunity. As CRE begins Digital twins need to strike the balance between detail and
reopening in a post-coronavirus environment, the business utility and investments in digital twins need to keep scale
case for digital twins is increasingly clear and compelling. in perspective. The hospital wayfinding analogy works
here. The map does not need to show the average visitor
A digital twin is a simplified data representation of an the location of specific Operating rooms, let alone their
object. Boats, weather systems, cakes etc. all have famil- installed features. Instead it needs to show the location of
iar analogs in the form of cruise ship maps, dashboard waiting rooms and the cafeteria. When it comes to digital
KPI or delightful recipes. For my purposes, a digital twin twins in CRE, use cases help keep the business case
is an online data representation of a structure and the and extent of integration in perspective. There may be a
activities that occur in it. Virtualization is another import- technical ambition to model the entire building, but the
ant term to note as it describes the process of making a business use case sets the boundaries of what systems
digital copy of a physical entity. are considered integral or optional to the investment.

Many vendors also include operational features and func- When a building is virtualized, it is carved up into
tionality when describing their product as a digital twin. minimum viable architectural spaces described by

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