We are thrilled to announce that our project partner, IES, recently presented TwinAIR project at ‘Sustainable Places 2023‘ conference held in Madrid, Spain from June 14th to 16th, 2023.
IES gave a 20 minutes presentation titled ” TwinAIR: Leveraging Digital Twins to Digitise and Optimise Indoor Air Quality for Occupant Health and Wellbeing”.
The session gained high interest from the audience comprised of esteemed individuals representing academia and the industrial sector.
Attendees were particularly intrigued by the concept of vehicle digital twins and expressed a strong desire to learn more about this aspect. The participants also posed questions regarding whether our project mimics the operational aspects of the vehicle, and not only the air quality aspects.
The abstract which was submitted for our participation is the following:
“Human exposure to poor air quality is a leading risk factor to human health, with the World Health organisation reporting that poor air quality caused 4.2 million deaths in 2016 alone. With the average European spending approximately 90% of their time indoors, the importance of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) on human wellbeing is becoming increasingly important, particularly when considering how this can now be linked to economic metrics such as labour productivity levels. Productivity losses associated with sick building syndrome, for example, which is directly correlated with poor IAQ, is estimated to cost the US economy up to $70bn per year. Furthermore, the importance of high quality IAQ has been further highlighted through the Covid-19 pandemic, with workers having more stringent demands on the air quality within their offices prior to returning to in-person working, providing a further challenge for employers to encourage their workforce to return to the office. The Horizon Europe funded TwinAIR project intends to introduce a first of its kind technological solution to improve IAQ in a wide spectrum of indoor living activities (residents, workplaces, transportation, hospitals, etc) while investigating how air pollutants in indoor spaces can adversely affect the health of the people inhabiting them, to support public health through community awareness and policy making. Although the project intends to investigate and address a far ranging and multi-disciplinary number of objectives, specifically TwinAIR will involve the adaptation of best in class digital twin technologies to widen their scope and facilitate the modelling of indoor air contaminants, their transfer mechanisms and rate of decay within buildings, introducing a multi-level digital twin for real time air quality data utilization and response enhancement to ensure optimal air conditions, comfort and wellbeing. This will provide the end user with the functionality to create virtual monitoring points within their building or within a specific zone, enabling the virtual sensing of contaminant concentrations at any location in a building without the requirement for complex and costly physical sensor, while unlocking other services, including the Intelligent Building Controller for IAQ, enabling users to gain operational efficiencies in their buildings without compromising IAQ and to prioritise scheduling of maintenance activities, for example. As the project has kicked off in the last ten months, this presentation will present the TwinAIR project, its overarching context and goals as well as its technological ambitions. Early stage progress towards the technology solutions will be discussed as well as the next steps.”
It was a great pleasure to be part of this remarkable event!
We look forward to sharing more updates on the TwinAIR project and continuing our collaborative efforts to drive innovation and positive change in the sector of indoor air quality.
Stay tuned for exciting developments!