The EU Green Deal, beginning in 2019, promoted a roadmap for operating the transition to a sustainable EU economy by turning climate issues and environmental challenges into opportunities in all policy areas and making the transition fair and inclusive for all. Focusing on the built environment, the voluntary adoption of rating systems for sustainability assessment is growing, with an increasing market value, and is perceived as a social responsibility both by public administration and by private companies. This paper proposes a framework for shifting from a static sustainability assessment to a digital twin (DT)-based and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled dynamic approach. This new approach allows for a real-time evaluation and control of a wide range of sustainability criteria with a user-centered point of view. A pilot building, namely, the eLUX lab cognitive building in the University of Brescia, was used to test the framework with some sample applications. The educational building accommodates the daily activities of the engineering students by constantly interacting with the sensorized asset monitoring indoor comfort and air quality conditions as well as the energy behavior of the building in order to optimize the trade-off with renewable energy production. The framework is the cornerstone of a methodology exploiting the digital twin approach to support the decision processes related to sustainability through the whole building’s life cycle.

Purpose: This paper provides a critical review of developments in the adaptability of buildings. The purpose of this paper is to determine the current “state-of-the-art”, describe current thinking and trends in research and practice, and identify issues and gaps that further research can address. It provides a basis for a scientific and practical understanding of the interdependencies across different design criterion. This paper increases the awareness of architects, engineers, clients and users on the importance of adaptability and its role in lowering impacts over the lifecycle of buildings as part of the infrastructure system.Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws mainly from the literature as its source of evidence. These were identified from established databases and search engines (e.g. Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar) using keywords such as adaptability, adaptable, adaptation, and flexibility. Over 80 sources including books, journal papers, conference proceedings, research reports and doctoral theses covering the period 1990 to 2017 were reviewed and categorised. An inductive approach was used to critically review and categorise these publications and develop a framework for analysis.Findings: The concept of adaptability includes many dimensions which can broadly fall into two categories: changes to buildings and user adaptations to buildings. However, previous research has mostly focussed on the former, with many attempts to identify building attributes that facilitate adaptability, and some considerations for its assessment. Key areas that have not been adequately addressed and which require further research include: user/occupant adaptations, cost, benefits and implications of various adaptability measures, and the development of a standardised assessment methodology that could aid in decision making in the design stage of buildings.Research limitations/implications: The adaptability strategies considered in this review focussed mainly on building components and systems, and did not include the contribution of intelligent and smart/biological systems. The coverage is further limited in scope due to the period considered (1990-2017) and the exclusion of terms such as “retrofit” and “refurbishment” from the review. However, the findings provide a solid basis for further research in the areas identified above. It identifies research issues and gaps in knowledge between the defined needs and current state-of-the-art on adaptive building for both research and practice.Originality/value: This paper is a review of research into a highly topical subject, given the acknowledged need to adapt buildings over their lifecycle to environmental, economic or social changes. It provides further insights on the dimensions of adaptability and identifies areas for further research that will contribute to the development of robust tools for the assessment of building adaptability, which will enhance the decision-making process of building design and the development of a more sustainable built environment.

The adaptability of buildings addresses the responses of buildings to the changing needs of owners/users and the demands of external factors, over their lifecycle. An understanding of these changes is therefore key to the creation of adaptable buildings. This paper reports research which was aimed at modelling building changes to better understand the challenges for their adaptability. An in-depth study of the changes in selected case studies was conducted to understand the nature, characteristics, and implications of these changes for buildings and their ability to adapt. The findings from these case studies were analyzed against theoretical models reported in the literature on change and adaptability. As a result, a model was developed that identified and categorized a wide spectrum of changes to the building fabric within the broad remit of adaptability that are triggered by many factors, which are sometimes external to the building or organization. In the cases investigated, it was found that the factors that lead to actual changes to buildings were not necessarily due to the ease of making those changes, but rather the organizational will and means to make the changes. Similarly, changes were made not because the building systems were obsolete, but because of non-building factors. The timings of changes therefore did not correspond to the assumed lifespan models of different building layers, suggesting that a new way of predicting and/or categorizing building changes is needed. Furthermore, the interrelationships and nature of the triggers for change suggest that the adaptability of buildings is not just about building systems, but also about non-building factors. Thus, the further exploration of non-building triggers and enablers for change using the developed model presented here, will further enhance the creation of more adaptable buildings.

The INNOVance research project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, wants to push a radical innovation into the Italian Construction sector by creating the Italian construction database - containing information about products, works, and spaces - along the whole construction service life. This research wants to improve the efficiency in using and maintaining objects' information - which is achieved by linking continually updated, extensible life-cycle objects data to independent software using Building Information Models - throughout the entire life cycle. The work done consists of three main steps: (1) to give an unambiguous name to everything in the construction process, from products to spaces, from activities to buildings, etc.; (2) to define structure and content of the information related to each named entity; and (3) to pair each entity in the database with a BIM object. The multitude of rules, definitions and practices that characterizes the Italian construction sector causes difficulties in data transmission among stakeholders; so, the first priority of INNOVance was to create a coding system based on a standardized and unequivocal name. To manage and use information through the construction process, technical datasheets have been defined and standardized among homogeneous object categories (construction products, spaces, construction operations, etc.) to allow users to easily and quickly compare and retrieve information. Data will be freely accessible throughout a web-based portal that relies on the INNOVance database. In addition, specific plug-ins allow creating, updating and linking objects directly from BIM software. At the end of the project, database interoperability is guaranteed by Building Smart Italy with the adoption of the IFC protocol.