Digital Basements- Optimizing basement construction using real-time monitoring and digital twins

Older structures are being replaced as inner-city urban renewal becomes more common. In such cases, the question of
what to do with the old foundations of previous buildings becomes a challenge for designing new superstructures. The
reuse of existing foundations results in significant financial and environmental savings. However, current methods for
assessing foundation reuse, such as desk studies and NDTs, have limitations that may increase risk or result in
suboptimal designs. Furthermore, the design of the superstructure above the existing foundation is a complex and
iterative process involving the interaction of multiple stakeholders, such as architects, structural and geotechnical
engineers. This project aims to develop a Digital twin for future construction where the basement/foundations and the
near-structure soil parameters will be captured and monitored in real-time. This will help make a convincing case for
reuse based on the on-the-fly lifetime monitored data that will flow into the design process. An optimized sensing system
will be designed for effective system identification after identifying the parameters that need to be captured from the
perspective of various stakeholders. A computational-BIM-based workflow will be developed, with autonomous
connections between the 3D model, structural and geotechnical FEM models to produce design outputs based on design
and constructability constraints. The workflow will be tested on a candidate construction project.