Dig-IT lab regularly organises discussions with its partners, with topics spanning from research results to common challenges regarding digititalisation and sustainability in the built environment. The ”Diggin Discussions” that are of general interest will be available here.
See also our open lectures
Beyond Smart Buildings:
Rethinking How We Value PropTech and Digital Innovation in Real Estate
2025-12-05
Speaker: Loi Dang, KTH Real Estate and Construction management
PropTech can generate both operational and financial value—through more efficient operations, better data, and more informed, risk-reducing investment decisions—yet these benefits are rarely reflected in property valuations or returns, which makes the Real Estate sector reluctant to adopt. Why is digital value not captured? And how does this gap emerge?
KTH Researcher Loi Dang has a background in commercial real estate at Skanska properties and she draws on global data from 2,549 PropTech firms. The presentation highlights the business models that currently dominate the PropTech landscape. Interviews with Swedish real estate stakeholders further reveal that when and where digital value is created is crucial for determining whether it can be capitalized—and why this type of value often disappears in today’s business model employed by the Real Estate sector.
Language: English
Talk with Shoaib Azizi, KTH:
Diggin Discussion on a Life Cycle Perspective on ICT Solutions in Buildings
2025-11-24
Speaker: Shoaib Azizi, researcher working with lifecycle assessment methodology at KTH (SEED).
In buildings, ICT-based digitalisation such as building monitoring systems (BMS) is often presumed beneficial, yet few studies assess their life cycle impacts. This project applies life cycle assessment (LCA) to Swedish case study buildings with BMS. The findings highlight that net benefits of ICT depend on system design, context, and enabling effects, with overused sensors reducing gains and smart controls or behavioral change enhancing them, underscoring the need for life cycle thinking to guide environmental performance improvements.
Shoaib Azizi is a researcher and engineer with industrial experience from large-scale refrigeration, heat pumps, and solar pumps. He completed his PhD at Umeå University on digital tools for building management and energy efficiency and now works at KTH (SEED), focusing on lifecycle assessment methodology and the environmental impacts of digitalization.
Language: English
A shift from isolation towards a real estate ecosystem
2025-04-25
Speaker: Tobias Davidsson, Akademiska Hus
Listen to Tobias Davidsson from Akademiska Hus discussing a possible shift from isolated, disconnected practices within the real estate industry to a more integrated, collaborative, and technology-driven ecosystem.
An ecosystem approach envisions the real estate industry as a network of interconnected players, platforms, and data streams working together to optimize processes, enhance the user experience, and create a more sustainable, transparent, and efficient environment. Easier said than done, Akademiska Hus discuss how their approach led them to evaluate reference designations, ontologies and data-as-a-product in trying to solve needs in both vertical integration within the company and horizontal integration thru out the value chain.
Get presentation slides here:
Language: English
White box digital twins
2024-04-11
Speaker: Marco Molinari, Director KTH Live-In Lab
A brief introduction to the concepts of digital models, digital shadows and digital twins. Marco Molinari illustrates applications of digital twins to fault detection and machine learning in buildings and highlights current challenges and opportunities of white box digital twins in buildings.
Get presentation slides here:
Language: English
Swedish