Empathic Building digital twin at City of Oulu’s BusinessAsema

When the new BusinessAsema was being built, it was to become a testing ground for several new smart solutions related to real estate. BusinessAsema wanted to test the value of smart cleaning, monitoring utilization, occupancy information, and safety solutions for both BusinessAsema users and city facility management.

A challenge was thrown to selected Finnish companies to introduce their solutions and test them in BusinessAsema. Haltian was one of the chosen companies to take on the challenge, introducing the Empathic Building digital twin, powered by Thingsee IoT sensor devices to the space.

BusinessAsema’s Empathic Building gives the users both remote and on-sight access to the digital twin so that they can, for example, view the meeting rooms, check their availability, and find BusinessAsema services. The digital twin also gives valuable insights into the air quality, temperature, and usage levels of the different spaces, making facility management easier.

The data shown in the digital twin is gathered from Haltian Thingsee sensors, like the Thingsee PRESENCE sensor for occupancy information and visitor counting, and the environmental sensor and indoor air quality sensors showing BusinessAsema environment conditions like temperature and air quality.

One of the newer use cases in BusinessAsema is the visitor and occupancy information of BusinessAsema’s cafeteria: Thingsee PRESENCE sensors are installed under the cafeteria tables, from where they report occupancy information to Empathic Building digital twin. In the digital twin, the cafeteria’s utilization level is shown in percentages and people can see whether the cafeteria is busy or not.

Now, the BusinessAsema digital twin can be seen on the BusinessAsema website where users can both get to know the different spaces and continue to the booking system. The BusinessAsema digital twin also shows important information like the placement of induction loops for hearing aids and bus and train schedules.

BusinessAsema facility management has benefitted from the available data, which can be used to optimize the operation of the cafeteria, the use of facilities, and the cleaning needs and schedule. Empathic Building utilization reports are also used to distinguish different behavior trends that can be used to improve the functionality of BusinessAsema.

“The BusinessAsema digital twin, or Virtual BusinessAsema as we call it, has given another layer to our services and the user experience. Our visitors can find what they need easily from Virtual BusinessAsema.” Jari Jokisalo, the smart building coordinator at BusinessAsema, says. “We are a place of co-creation and innovation, so we are proud to use and showcase innovative digital solutions ourselves.”