To tackle the major societal challenges before us, we must harness all the new opportunities afforded to us by so-called technology 4.0 to imagine new solutions and embrace highly complex issues. At the same time, digital technology has a significant environmental footprint and must undergo its own transformation. We thus need to invent a new model of prosperity that will combine technology with essential changes in behaviour and usage, with a view to combating climate change, preserving biodiversity and improving people's living environment.
Reinventing construction methods with eco-design and digital twins
The Egis group's ambition is to be a leading player in intelligent and sustainable infrastructure to fight climate change and improve people's quality of life. This is how we define our purpose. Environmental and digital issues therefore lie at the heart of our development strategy, which we have entitled 'Impact the Future'.
Given the major environmental challenges, we must reinvent the way we build. Digital is one of the levers to help us do so.
In design phase, only the digital representation of the asset allows for truly systemic approaches and simulations that are sufficiently sophisticated to explore new avenues for optimisation in respect of environmental requirements. This is what we call eco-design.
We can point to the example of the environmental design of the refurbishment of the Montparnasse Tower: a positive impact and low-carbon makeover. The asbestos-free tower will have reduced its energy consumption by a factor of ten compared to the original project. It will be the first wind tower in the world to capture wind energy and reduce mechanical ventilation to a minimum, with an ultra-efficient facade that incorporates a novel principle of natural ventilation in its thickness. Designing this envelope required detailed simulations.
Once the physical asset is built, its digital twin will help to perform in-depth monitoring in real time and therefore offer a better understanding of its behaviour and uses. It will also enable owners to track low-carbon and energy efficiency performance over time and throughout the life cycle of the structure.
Consequently, we are seeing the development of a new form of digital engineering for low carbon assets that are tailored to the climate we face today and tomorrow.
Climate: mitigation as much as adaptation
Beyond eco-design, strengthening the resilience of infrastructures and communities has also become a major concern of our time. Extreme weather events such as floods and wildfires are becoming increasingly frequent. Here again, new 4.0 technologies (big data, artificial intelligence, etc.) provide us with the keys to a better understanding of complex, interconnected phenomena in order to anticipate and better prepare for crises. For example, we have developed the ROSAU solution, dedicated to urban resilience. The tool is designed to study the interdependencies of urban services in order to identify possible domino effects between electricity, water, telecommunications and transport networks in the event of extreme weather events, and plan preventive actions as part of an integrated risk management approach.
Another increasingly important problem in our cities is the well-known phenomenon of the urban heat island (UHI), which is largely due to the over-artificialization of our urban land, and which becomes more acute during the summer. Our teams have developed ICETool, a calculation tool that allows us to study, model and address this phenomenon more effectively (and more quickly!) than with traditional methods.
By modelling the UHI phenomenon, ICETool is a useful design aid. As the tool is made using a GIS, layers can be added to cross-reference the UHI map with, for example, the cartography of populations at risk, or areas exposed to other risks such as flooding.
Innovating by combining disciplines
Finally, we conduct a proactive innovation policy to devise new solutions and new economic models, including the following:
- Seaboost, an Egis start-up which offers proactive solutions for marine biodiversity. Among these solutions feature artificial eco-reefs which will provide a replacement habitat to species while their natural environment regenerates. These eco-reefs are made using 3D additive manufacturing (by XtreeE) because only digital technology can reproduce the extremely sophisticated architectural complexity of a natural reef. This is a fine alliance between ecological engineering, digital engineering and biomimicry!
- Cycle Up: a marketplace dedicated to the reuse of construction materials. Materials account for 56% of a building’s carbon footprint and 70% of the waste produced in France. The marketplace matches up industry professionals with one another in the aim of reusing materials generated by a demolition project in a refurbishment or newbuild operation. An excellent example of the circular economy at work!
- Finally, Soil.is, our most recent solution, dedicated to carbon sequestration by soil. Indeed, soil is one of the main natural carbon sinks, if it is in good health. The goal is to use technology to be able to rapidly assess the carbon sequestration potential of a plot of land and put forward nature based solutions to reinforce this potential This is an essential tool to achieve carbon neutrality.
Digital tech also in need of transformation
Digital technology is thus one of the keystones for designing sustainable cities, implementing the mobility of the future, and designing, building and operating structures against a background of resource constraints. However, we must be aware that with digital technology, we are facing a paradox. Technology does allow us to better understand the complexity of the challenges we face and provide answers. But at the same time, digital technology has a strong environmental footprint. Digital now accounts for 3-4% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (twice as much as the aviation sector). The proportion of energy consumed by digital is increasing by 6% per year, according to the Shift Project's 2020 report. Digital technology must therefore also undergo a transformation. As a result, we must therefore develop both “IT for green” and “green IT”, and work on digital sobriety.
Towards a new model of prosperity
Consequently, it will be a combination of both technology and the advent of new models of prosperity founded on changes in behaviour and practices, that will allow us to transition into a new era centred on human wellbeing and the protection of our environment.
