Whether at work, at home or while shopping: Around the world, most people spend a large part of their lives indoors. But the indoor air of many buildings is contaminated with various pollutants, so that a variety of diseases, such as allergies, cancer and asthma, can sometimes be traced back to poor indoor air. "In Germany, the problem is still comparatively manageable, but we also work with partners in southern and eastern Europe. The situation there is quite different in some cases. That's why indoor air quality is such an important issue for the EU, too," explains Lukasz Wisniewski. He heads the computer networks working group at the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) with a focus on communication and is also a board member at inIT.
As project manager of the TwinAIR project at TH OWL, Dr Lukasz Wisniewski, together with his team and colleagues from CIIT, wants to provide insights into improving indoor air over the next four years. Since every building is individual in terms of its ventilation systems, room layout, size and staff, it is almost impossible to guarantee standardised indoor air management. Digital twins will help here. "A digital twin is a digital image of a physical object, so in our project these are buildings, technical systems and also people. These digital images contain all the important data about the objects that help us to create the best possible indoor air conditions," says Wisniewski. The project partners in the large joint project want to proceed collaboratively. TH OWL's task? "We as a university are dealing with the topic of data management and communication. We want to integrate data from different sources into a secure data platform and then make it available to the applications via the standardised interfaces. That is our task," Lukasz Wisniewski explains. The goal is for algorithms to specify, based on the implemented data, how the heating and ventilation system must be set, for example, in order to ensure optimal air quality.
TwinAIR
TwinAIR is embedded in the EU project "Digital Twins Enabled Indoor Air Quality Management for Healthy Living", which started on 1 September 2022 with an online meeting for all participants to get to know each other. TwinAIR will be completed on 31 August 2026. The project is coordinated by the University of Petras in Greece. A total of 23 partners from nine European countries are involved in the project. Also involved are the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) and the CENTRUM INDUSTRIAL IT e.V. (CIIT) in Lemgo.