The SmartBuilt4EU project

The SmartBuilt4EU project consolidated and supported the Smart Building Innovation Community (SBIC) for the purpose of facilitating the exchange of knowledge and good practices between EU-funded projects and national initiatives in the field of smart buildings and the related business, policy, and media.

The SmartBuilt4EU Task Forces

The project has set up four task forces investigating issues related to smart buildings: their objective was to identify transversal issues and solutions for smart buildings and enable efficient sharing of good practices between projects and experts.

The investigated task forces are listed below:

  • Task Force 1 “Interactions with users” investigates how the interactions between any smart building and its users can be facilitated and improved, as a key success factor for the market uptake of smart building solutions.
  • Task Force 2 “Efficient building operation” focuses on the optimal integration and use of smart solutions to allow an efficient building operation.
  • Task Force 3 “Interactions with the external environment” investigates how smart buildings can interact at best with their external environment.
  • Task Force 4 “Crosscutting issues” addresses the transversal requirements (Business & finance, data, education & upskilling) to support the market uptake of smart buildings, and the strengthening of the related ecosystem.

The SmartBuilt4EU white papers

12 White papers resulted from the collaborative work conducted with the four Task Forces, composed of volunteer members of the SBIC. Each paper investigates a specific topic to smart buildings, with a focus on the remaining challenges and barriers to smart building deployment, and the associated research and innovation gaps that should be addressed in the near future. These white papers were designed in such a way that their key findings could directly feed the  . It should be noted that the European Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for smart buildings provides an overview and key actions for EU support for research, innovation, and market uptake in the field of smart buildings based on a set of ten key priorities for the EU R&I agenda that was suggested by the SmarBuilt4EU project consortium, followed by a public consultation, both with the expert board members and a public survey.

The co-design methodology by Dowel

A co-design methodology was developed and designed by Dowel to elaborate the SB4EU white papers. This methodology proposes a workflow combined with dedicated tools, to guide and support a community of stakeholders in the collaborative elaboration of white papers on specific topics, with progressive steps to identify the topic for investigation, formalise the state of the art, the barriers and drivers, and the related R&I gaps.

This collaborative process could be replicated in other frameworks where research and innovation gaps are sought for.

You can read more about the collaborative design methodology in a research article published by Dowel Innovation: https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/3-36/v1