75 percent of the buildings in Germany date from a time before the first thermal insulation regulations. Renovating them is a mammoth task. So far, the planning alone takes around 16 working hours for each building. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have now developed an AI platform that shortens this process to just a few minutes. What the system can do and who benefits from it.
Energy-saving renovations are considered an important lever for climate protection in Germany. Around 75 percent of the buildings in this country were built before the first thermal insulation regulations. The preparation of corresponding modernizations therefore takes a lot of time in practice. Because: Until now, experts have had to compile information by hand from different documents such as pictures or floor plans.
This data then needs to be evaluated according to economic, technical and ecological aspects. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have therefore developed the digital platform NaiS. The system uses artificial intelligence to independently link the diverse building data and automatically supplement missing information. The software then processes the results semantically and visualizes them in three-dimensional models.
From 16 hours to 20 minutes: This is how much time AI saves when planning building renovations
The new technology promises to make the daily work of planners easier. Tasks that previously took around sixteen hours of work can now be completed in ten to twenty minutes. This corresponds to an acceleration of the processes by a factor of fifty. In test runs with over a hundred possible users, the vast majority confirmed this practical added value for evaluating buildings.
Municipalities and large institutional portfolio holders in particular could benefit from this. Because: These players need reliable foundations for their upcoming modernizations. The project partner, Karoline Fath from Ed. Züblin AG, explained:
The sustainable development of our building stock is the future challenge of the construction and real estate industry. We are convinced that AI technologies such as the inventory tracking services developed in NaiS can make an important contribution – for the benefit of our planet and our society.
New project recycles reinforced concrete using AI
The developed platform is now available from the German Sustainable Building Council. The approaches from the project should be used beyond the term and continuously developed. To conclude the project, a summit meeting is scheduled to take place in June 2026. The potential of the technology will be discussed in detail there.
A new joint project called ConCIRCLE is already building on these initial results. The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space is funding this project with almost two million euros. The aim is a digital evaluation system to analyze the reusability of reinforced concrete components. To do this, the research team wants to expand existing AI technologies and combine them with ecological and economic evaluation methods.
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