Digital Twin’s effort for the decarbonization process in the built environment

Abstract. European strategies for decarbonizing the built environment, and their application in sustainable operational practices, involve political, regula-tory, and economic aspects, as well as social and behavioural considerations. Despite occupying only 3% of the Earth's surface, architectural heritage is, in fact, responsible for 60-80% of energy consumption and 75% of carbon emissions globally, and 36% in the European context. The temporal dimension of the 2030 and 2050 reference scenarios, cou-pled with novel performance metrics for new and existing buildings, empha-sizes the urgency of integrating Life Cycle Thinking approaches into a per-spective of climate neutrality and decarbonization. Digital assets and related technologies, due to their enhanced ability to ac-quire, analyse, interpret, and display real-time information, offer innovative paradigms and opportunities for enhancing resource efficiency and manag-ing resource and energy consumption while reducing/mitigating environmen-tal impacts. In this context, the paper introduces some partial results of the ongoing re-search activities that highlight an emerging research perspective on the Digital Twin's role in the decarbonization process of the built environment. Interop-erability and digitalization are key concepts, along with the Smart Building concept and Digital Twin approaches.