Built Environment

A brain for buildings, a digital scale model of a city, or a robot assistant on the construction site. Digitalization is crucial in the built environment. Giorgio Agugiaro explains what your city will look like in the future.

The office building you work in could be equipped with a "brain" in the coming years: a self-learning system that optimizes building performance and thus sustainability and comfort.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Twins are cautiously gaining a foothold in the construction industry. The possibilities of digitalization seem endless, but their implementation still needs to be improved.

Construction in the Netherlands urgently needs to innovate. The housing shortage, meeting sustainability goals, and infrastructure maintenance make transition and innovation necessary. Professor André Dorée, chair of the Civil Engineering & Management Department at the University of Twente, is already involved for 30 years in how the Dutch construction industry - and infrastructure in particular - innovates. "In this, I mainly look at the role of the government," he says. "It fulfills many roles. Among other things, the government is market master, important buyer, licensing authority and enforcer."

Innovations that go far off the beaten track, that is what 4TU.Bouw, one of the nine Centers of the 4TU.Federation, is dedicated to. The four technical universities and fourteen universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands are working together on a long-term vision and an action plan for (fundamental) research in the construction sector. Clever minds are shining their light on the future of the construction sector, each from their own background and perspective.

The 4TU.Bouw consortium has collaborated in the BTIC to draft the Strategic Program ‘Digitalization’ (in Dutch only).