Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI
Digitalization offers the construction and real estate industry an enormous potential for increasing productivity and exploring new value creation opportunities. For the past three years, eleven partners worked together in the iECO project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWiK) to develop a future-proof digital infrastructure for the industry. Their central result: a Gaia-X-compliant data space that forms the basis for a digital twin of the entire building life cycle and enables innovative smart services.
With iECO, a platform has been created that breaks down existing data silos and replaces them with a secure, standardized and interoperable data space. The digital twin enables a holistic mapping of the construction process – from planning and construction to the demolition of a building. The use of forgery-proof digital technologies promotes more efficient collaboration between companies and reduces the high coordination effort in the industry.
The data space forms the basis for advanced smart services that tap into optimization potential along the entire value chain of the construction and real estate industry. Inspection and approval procedures can be prepared digitally, significantly reducing administrative work and accelerating processes. An outstanding example of this is the legally compliant digitalization of the proof of stability, which impressively demonstrates that the use of BIM (building informaiton modeling) is indispensable when submitting a building application. In addition, the integration of AI allows for the (partially) automated creation, optimization and adaptation of schedules, enabling more efficient control of construction processes.
An important area of application for the developed technologies is the ability to identify and anticipate disruptions at an early stage. This not only helps to avoid delays and improve occupational safety, but it also increases the accuracy of infrastructure maintenance predictions. To this end, Fraunhofer IVI developed the SIMAP – Smart Infrastructure Maintenance and Prediction service, which impresses with its high prediction accuracy. SIMAP uses advanced AI methods for the intelligent planning and prediction of maintenance measures in the construction industry. The solution enables future-oriented budget planning for facility management and infrastructure maintenance by analyzing historical data and external factors.
The research work carried out in iECO shows that the use of LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) and a modified SARIMA procedure is particularly suitable for improving the reliability of predictions for structure maintenance. In addition, Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI are used here to further optimize decision-making processes. This combination allows for the early identification of maintenance needs, so that measures can be planned in a targeted manner and costs minimized.
In addition to SIMAP, a solution was developed with COPRA – Commodity Price Analysis, which enables the prediction of price developments for raw and building materials. COPRA analyzes dependencies on global economic and political events, taking ESG criteria into account. With the help of a system for risk analysis in world affairs, also developed by Fraunhofer IVI, as a data basis, well-founded forecasts can be created that help companies prepare for market changes.
Various AI methods such as decision trees, neural networks and the temporal fusion transformer were used for the calculations. Ultimately, the polynomial regression approach, which was further improved by a maximum likelihood estimate, provided the best results. The data obtained was processed in a graphical dashboard and integrated with the project partners.
With the successful completion of iECO, which the partners celebrated at a final consortium meeting at Fraunhofer IVI in Dresden, an important milestone in the digital transformation of the construction industry has been reached. Fraunhofer IVI will continue to work on AI-powered solutions for intelligent infrastructure maintenance in order to actively shape future challenges in the industry.
More information on IECO (in German only)