#16: What Goes Into Building a Sustainable Tower?
What goes into building a sustainable tower? How can the virtual twin help reduce the environmental impact of building this tower? Get the answer to these questions and more in this episode.
This episode is part of the Building Tomorrow project. Click here to find out more.
Meet our speakers
“I believe carbon neutrality is possible in the long term thanks to the virtual twin, because you can constantly find new ways to optimize things and get progressively to neutrality.”
— Bastien Hillen
Read the transcript
Narrator: This is Disruptors Unleashed, a series that explores the disruptive technologies shaping our world. We are continuing our coverage of the Building Tomorrow project, a monumental project that aims to reimagine the iconic Eiffel Tower as a sustainable tower of tomorrow, redesigned in accordance with today's sustainability principles, and utilizing the latest digital solutions and technical capabilities.
Today, we are joined by Bastien Hillen, Sustainability Value Expert at Dassault Systèmes, as he talks about designing the new tower's entire operations model and life cycle using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Welcome.
Sriyani Rao, Host: So, Bastien. How would you approach a project as complex as building this new tower? What dimensions would you take into account?
Bastien: For this type of very complex project such as this new tower, you need to take into account many different dimensions. Of course, cost, quality, regulation, but also environmental impact. And this is where the system of system approach and the virtual twin experience is bringing a lot of benefits, because you can understand the impact on all these dimensions of the decisions you are going to take, in advance. So, you can really optimize and find the optimal one, to mitigate the impact on all the dimensions.
Sriyani: From an operational standpoint, what does the virtual twin bring to the equation?
Bastien: So, the benefits of the virtual twin in operation is very important, because we can build, in the design of the virtual twin at the beginning, the entire operation and on the entire life cycle of the tower. So, it's the best way not to make mistakes, when we are designing the tower, when we are going to run the operations. And this is where we are going to be able to really reduce the impact on the environment and improve the profitability of the operations of the tower.
Sriyani: What are the levers available to balance water and electricity consumption as much as possible?
Bastien: When we have designed the tower, optimizing the water consumption has been very important for us. We have planned a lot of garden and trees in the tower, requiring a lot of water, in order also to generate less heat for the city. But we have also taken into account that, and we planned... when we build the tower, to gather a lot of rainwater, and to reuse it as much as we as we can.
And in terms of operations, thanks to our system of system approach, we're reusing a lot of the greywater from other usage in the tower, to be used for watering the gardens and the trees, in order to minimize as much as possible, the consumption of water for this new tower.
In terms of electricity consumption, we have tried to minimize the impact of usage for this new tower. So, we have put a lot of solar panels in in the design of the tower. And we have made simulations to optimize the positioning of the solar panels, of course when we have built them, but they can also be changed during the time of the day, depending on the sun course and the season, to be sure that we gather as much as possible, energy, as we can, in order to minimize the usage of other source of electricity. And we are using 100% of renewable energies on top of the solar energy gathered, to become as energy neutral as possible.
Sriyani: Carbon neutrality is one of the key drivers of sustainability, but it is also one of the most challenging. Is carbon neutrality possible in the long term? How can we reach this goal, especially when dealing with multiple stakeholders?
Bastien: Yes, we believe it's possible in the long term, thanks to the virtual twin, because if you build a model and you constantly update it with the latest information from the real activity on the ground, you can constantly find new ways to optimize things and get progressively to neutrality.
So, I think the key to get to neutrality, because this is a systemic problem, is to be sure that all the stakeholders are collaborating. In the past, very few were collaborating; the design office and the architects were responsible for building the tower, not operating it. Thanks to the virtual twin and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, more stakeholders can collaborate, leveraging 3D as a universal language to better understand the impact, because that's something very critical to make sure that a lot of different people can collaborate and understand the challenges of the others. And that's, for us, a critical way to reach carbon neutrality — is to have more people collaborate and understand the impact on their decisions on the others.
I think the stakeholders are ready to collaborate. They were lacking a solution to collaborate and understand the impact of their decision on the others, and that's what we're bringing to the market now.
Sriyani: Thank you, Bastien, for sharing your insights and expertise. To find out more about the Building Tomorrow project, 3ds.com/insights/building-tomorrow.
Narrator: Disruptors Unleashed is produced by Dassault Systèmes. For more episodes, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, or your nearest streaming platforms. To learn more about Dassault Systèmes, visit us at 3ds.com.
