The ENCORE project…
Renovating... house renovations
Smart process to better plan, design, build and manage energy-efficient renovated buildings
The ENCORE Objectives
We aim to boost the renovation industry and increase the share of renovated stock in Europe by providing effective and affordable BIM tools that cover the whole renovation life-cycle to achieve higher energy efficiency and comfort levels.
The main objective of ENCORE is to increase the share of renovated stock in Europe and worldwide by providing effective and affordable BIM tools that cover the whole renovation life-cycle (from data collection to project execution, and commissioning/delivery). The project tackles energy efficiency and comfort parameters, involving all the actors in the process (architecture studios, designers, constructors, tenants, or public administration), and facilitating information exchange among all the parties.
To achieve this objective, the ENCORE project will create a system that integrates services for data acquisition from the buildings like Static LiDAR setups and LiDAR or photogrammetry equipment embarked in UAVs. It will also involve dwellers in the process by providing them with mobile tools to capture images or other in-doors information. It also provides support to architects and designers in the creation of the 3D models from the acquired data, automatically identifying and classifying the constructive elements, and allowing them to complete the model with existing BIM resources.
They will be able to modify the model, presenting the energy efficiency gains of different renovation alternatives, including the impact on the overall budget. ENCORE project will also provide mechanisms for the dwellers or owners to validate the project, either on-site with Augmented / Mixed Reality solutions, or online. Once the project is validated, it will automatically generate the work planning for the construction works, and once finalized, it will provide continuous monitoring of the energy consumption to ensure non-degradation of the renovation works.
The ENCORE technology will be validated in experimental facilities consisting of a baseline building and an experimental building that can be modified to measure the energy efficiency of the modification. Additionally, the pilot user owns several social buildings to renovate, where ENCORE can be validated in real-life conditions.
The ENCORE Methodology
Requirements gathering
Data sampling
Model creation
Renovation works
Validation
Renovation scenarios
Delivery / Commissioning
ENCORE will provide a unique entry point to all the actors in the renovation process in order to facilitate the exchange of information among all of them. These actors will be:
- architecture studios or freelance architects
- designers
- constructors and construction crews
- manufacturers or providers of materials and components
- tenants
- dwellers
- facility managers
- public administration
Achieving this objective will lead to several benefits for the construction and software industries, and society in general:
- The whole renovation process will be more agile and transparent.
- The costs of the renovation process will be drastically reduced and shortened. This will make renovation projects more affordable to the owners of the housings, thus boosting the building stock renovation ratios.
- From the software industry perspective, given that renovation projects account for 57% of all construction activity [DG Internal Policies, 2016], creating a specific solution that supports and accelerates the overall buildings renovation process, and obtains effective energy savings, will be an enormous market opportunity once the main research challenges have been overcome.
Within this context, the ENCORE consortium will conceive and develop a BIM Cloud-based solution that will offer several services to all the stakeholders in the renovation life-cycle. Some of these services are:
- data acquisition/surveying of the properties/buildings (interior and envelop),
- supported generation of BIM Models from Point Clouds or Photogrammetry
- a semantic classification of components
- manipulation of BIM models to perform energy efficiency simulations
- use of Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality techniques to provide quick feedback
- automatic generation of tasks for the construction crews
The following picture shows a general overview of services and data sources of ENCORE:
ENCORE solution will be validated and assessed at “EDEA Project”. EDEA, managed by the regional government of Extremadura (Spain), counts on two demonstrator housings (“Pattern” and “Experimental”), both built on the same plot and with construction features, surfaces and materials similar to those of the social housings of Extremadura.
The pattern housing is used as a reference and the experimental housing is used to evaluate different renovation strategies and measure their effectiveness. The involvement of the region of Extremadura will allow ENCORE Consortium to involve real dwellers in real renovation projects, linking energy efficiency to comfort parameters.
The ENCORE Work plan
WP1 | Specification of ENCORE Concept and Pilot Case
WP1 will undertake the analysis of the current State-of-the-Art and market requirements, together with the technical specifications and requirements and the definition of the ENCORE concept and architecture. The Specification of Pilot Cases and Use Case Scenarios will also be implemented in WP1.
WP2 | BIM-based support tool for digital modelling and information generation
The main objective of WP2 is to design, implement and test all the services that are related to the creation of the 3D model of the building: the data acquisition, the automatic discovery of components, their enhancement adding knowledge and their export to facilitate interoperability with existing BIM tools.
WP3 | BIM-aided holonic management system for building renovation
WP3 will design, implement and test the services that enable proactive generation of screening design scenarios, the validation of the renovated building modelled as a BIM by the customer / end-user through augmented reality, and on-site design validation, review and refinement. It will also design, implement and test an on-line planning system for automated generation of optimal work planning for the execution of construction projects. Finally, WP3 will define a system-of-systems representation of the renovated building and the development of the architecture of the holonic management system.
WP4 will design, implement and test the energy savings and simulation services and provide the necessary tools to retrofit the findings of the models into the rest of services, mainly KEES and CPM. WP4 will also deal with the monitoring and diagnostics of the whole life of the building, in order to ensure the non-degradation of the EE and Comfort parameters.
WP5 will facilitate the integration of the services developed in the previous WPs into a single solution / platform. Partners will set up a continuous integration / delivery environment in order to have incremental functional prototypes for the whole duration of the project.
WP6 will define the validation strategy of ENCORE Early and Full Prototypes and it will also perform the validation together with the definiton of an assessement strategy and the analysis of the results obtained in the pilot cases. WP6 will also perform an assessment with external companies to evaluate the potential acceptance of the market.
WP7 will address dissemination and communication activities. These will be designed to increase the visibility of the Encore project and the technologies and products it develops. It will create a roadmap for exploiting the commercial and business opportunities offered by the technology, while addressing IPR issues and conditions. It will also monitor, assess and evaluate all dissemination and communication activities performed and adjust action plan accordingly
WP8 is devoted to project coordination and management. It will define the management structure, manage potential conflicts and provide effective communication between the project and the Funding Agency. It will ensure that the project meets all deliverables on time and on budget according to the grant agreement
