This article was written by Daphne Tomlinson, Senior Research Associate at Memoori.

Digital Twins, virtual models of a process, product or service that allow for data analysis and system monitoring via simulations, are playing an increasing role in IoT and digital transformation in buildings. Projects today span multiple building sectors, including commercial real estate, retail, infrastructure, smart cities, smart campuses and healthcare facilities.

Deloitte predicted in 2019 that the digital twin is the next industry-wide disruption in real estate. The nascent market for digital twin platforms in smart commercial buildings has attracted early innovators offering a diverse range of use cases, who are challenging the established vendors of IT and building management systems with disruptive solutions. Incumbent BIoT players with digital twin solutions include Siemens, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric, Honeywell, IBM and Microsoft.

Some of the smaller firms with a single focus on digital twinning, many of them startup companies, are profiled below.

Cityzenith, has been helping to pioneer the Digital Twin trend since the company was founded in 2009. The Smart World Pro platform offered by Chicago-based Cityzenith allows clients to build custom Digital Twins of all types of real estate assets, from entire property portfolios to entire cities. The platform provides a visualization of all information in and around those assets, from capturing live pedestrian footfall around a campus from IoT sensors to alerts from building systems.

ThoughtWire is a Toronto, Canada-based venture-backed startup founded in 2009. Powered by Digital Twins, the firm’s applications for smart hospitals, smart buildings, and smart cities unlock the value of data generated from built environments by combining it with context from people, processes and IoT devices. By optimizing systems and connecting people, owners and operators can use digital twins to reduce costs, avoid future costs, increase occupancy rates, and improve overall asset value. ThoughtWire has calculated that digital twins can lower operating costs in some buildings by up to 88 cents per square foot per year.

In October 2019, the startup partnered with Schneider Electric to help digitize hospital buildings. The alliance with ThoughtWire allows Schneider Electric healthcare facilities customers to benefit from the connected hospital environment, where facilities management and clinical workflow operations are orchestrated. Thoughtwire’s Digital Twin enables Schneider Electric to improve patient outcomes with a data model of a hospital’s building systems, clinical and IT systems, IoT devices, workflows and people occupancy data.

Other companies based in North America providing digital twin solutions for building management applications include Enertiv (USA) providing Enertiv 360, an application that embeds real-time sensor data into 3D displays capable of replicating a digital twin of the entire mechanical and electrical infrastructure of large buildings; and PassiveLogic (USA), the developer of a fully autonomous platform for buildings, built on digital twins from the ground up.

Similar companies based in Europe providing digital twin solutions for building management applications include Invicara (Ireland), Iotics (UK), LeafTech (Germany), Spinalcom (France) and Twinview (UK).

The Australian company Willow, founded in 2011, has developed a platform built on Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twins service. Willow collects and harnesses project and building operations data to facilitate smart design and construction and optimize building performance. Formerly a digital design and construction company, three years ago Willow, in partnership with Investa, an Australian commercial real estate owner/operator, developed Willow Twin. This digital solution draws on static, historic and live operating data to create actionable insights that can transform the operation of buildings and infrastructure and how occupants and users experience these assets.

In May 2020, Willow launched a new version of its WillowTwin platform, which will be deployed across a select number of Commercial and Corporate Real-Estate projects throughout 2020. WillowTwin provides users with a single interface for all aspects of their building in a virtual “twin” of the real asset. Users can access asset information, Building Management System faults and Ticketing all in a single interface.

Similar companies based in Asia and Australia providing digital twin solutions for building management applications include the following: Anacle Systems, the developer of an IoT and Digital Twin-based Smart Building Platform in Singapore; BuildingIQ, the Australian provider of digital twinning platform for older buildings; and the iviva platform, a dynamic, digital replica of spaces, physical assets, systems and processes of the workplace/building by Singapore-based Eutech group.

Digital twins can be challenging to implement due to a lack of open-source software and standardization, interoperability issues, market confusion and high costs. BuildingSMART is one organization committed to the development of an open standard for a digital twin. Another new initiative to tackle these issues is the recently announced Digital Twin Consortium.

Founded by non-profit trade association, Object Management Group, together with founding members including Ansys, Dell Technologies, Lendlease and Microsoft, the alliance will collaborate across multiple industries to learn from each other and develop and apply best practices. The Consortium plans to build an ecosystem of users, drive best practices for digital twin usage and define requirements for new digital twin standards.

While, the benefits of Digital Twin solutions have been seen in pilot projects, this early adopter phase has yet to fully deliver on the promise of improved outcomes for commercial buildings. As the industry slowly moves from proof-of-concept to granular implementations of specific ROI-driven use cases, the approach will gain credibility.