Orkney Islands Council has used pioneering digital twin technology to optimise operational performance, energy efficiency and air quality across its building portfolio.

Working in partnership with climate tech solution provider, IES, the council has been able to centralise its building data into a single platform. The data was previously fragmented across various systems and logins.

Migrating to a single interface allows the council to quickly identify issues and manage buildings from one location, removing the typical challenges many local authorities face when it comes to grappling with vast amounts of building data from various disparate systems.

The change will improve efficiency and save time when analysing and translating data into actions to improve building performance, especially in cases such as this where the council’s buildings are geographically dispersed over a wide area.

In the early stages of the project, the council was able to identify where CO2 concentrations were higher than expected through indoor air quality monitoring and this informed measures to improve ventilation, which was especially important during the pandemic.

The project has also identified areas of overheating, representing significant opportunities to make savings across energy, cost, and carbon emissions.

The council initially focused on seven sites and working with IES and Internet of Things (IoT) subcontractor, Danalto, began setting out a process to gather data from existing Building Management Systems (BMS).

Additionally, new heat meters, oil meters and electricity meters were implemented, as well as indoor and outdoor weather sensors, allowing the council to collect more data than ever.

Steven Bruce, project officer (ReFLEX) at Orkney Islands Council, said: “The IES Command Centre has given us a much clearer picture of what is happening across our portfolio and we have already earmarked a further two sites to add into the system.

“The sites are either having an upgrade or extension, so are ideal candidates for additional meters and sensors to be implemented at the same time.

“Ideally, we hope to eventually include all buildings with BMS or controls in them within the interface so we can manage the whole estate from this one system.”

Recommended

• Twelve more Scots startups chosen for MSIP accelerator
• UKRI plan sees significant investment in the UK tech sector
• Eureka Solutions sees record turnover following restructuring

The partners collaborated to overcome security challenges caused by council IT networks needing to be completely separated from the outside world.

A secure connection to transfer data from IoT sensors to Danalto’s web service and then into IES’s iSCAN cloud-based data analytics platform was only possible through collaborative working.

The iSCAN platform analyses data and translates it into intelligence communicated via dashboards which can be accessed anywhere via web browser.

Valeria Ferrando, Associate Director, ICL Consultancy at IES, said: “A data-led, integrated approach eliminates typical frustrations associated with managing large building portfolios, and reliably enables savings and better efficiency.

“At a time when energy costs are at an all-time high and the race to zero emissions is gathering pace, it is great to see our digital twin technology already making a difference to large portfolio owners and local authorities, such as Orkney Islands Council, by helping them to identify efficiency improvements and deliver savings, whilst also optimising conditions for the health and wellbeing of building occupants.”

Get the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox

Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.

To subscribe, click here.