Aim: The “Inhabitant app” was developed to:

• Digitize the process of data collection and analyses from inhabitants
• Reduce the cost by outsourcing part of the inspection activities to the inhabitants
• Involving the end-users in the process of decision-making by collecting their needs and preferences
• Streamline and standardize the process by uploading the results in a structured way in BIM-SPEED cloud platform

Scope: The main benefit of the app is during the design phase by better understanding the as-is situation and the needs of the end user. The app however, can be used during the operation to collect feedback from the users for further evaluation and assessment.

In line with the aim of the BIM-SPEED project, the proposed application will facilitate and speed up the data collection from inhabitants while involving them into the decision-making processes. Several data from different categories of information dealing with objective and subjective matters relevant to the business of deep renovation can be collected by the inhabitants:

1. information that can be used to detect defects about building systems and services;
2. information which can be used to model the as-is situation;
3. information about the perceived comfort;
4. Information about wishes, needs and preferred renovation scenario

This information can be collected at different levels (unit of observation). The unit of observation can differ from the most public unit (building level) to the most private unit (a component within the apartment, e.g. a kitchen).

For each category of interest two different types of questions can be accommodated in the app, namely:

1) spatial questions; such questions are pertained to a specific space (e.g. a room). For example, "Please select your kitchen in the BIM model." In this case, all the collected response is a  global unique identifier (GUID) of that specific room which can be used for further analyses. This is achieved by implementing a BIM model in the app, which enables inhabitants to select a specific room or a component while replying to the set of questions. The next question would be “how do you find the acoustic comfort of this room?" The result collected is the answer which will be related to the GUID during the analysis.

 2) non spatial questions; such questions are not pertained to a specific space. For example,” what is your yearly maintenance cost?”. An upload functionality will enable a user to provide additional material.

An interactive BIM viewer is implemented in the app to facilitate the communication of spatial questions. Inhabitants can indicate a space in response to a question.

In line with the objectives of the BIM-Speed Project, the crowd data collection application aims to reduce time, cost and complexity of deploying the tools for data acquisition in residential renovation projects. Additionally, mapping of the data collected amongst various other packages also promotes the inter-operability of the platform.

Similar to any other crowdsourcing platform, the success of the process highly depends on the participation of the targeted group. In any case, the app can be used by a representative who can systematically collect the required data on behalf of the inhabitants.

Future Improvement:

Gamified techniques such as integration of virtual reality (e.g. viewing the renovation designs) can be added to stimulate the participation of the users. Additionally, it can be investigated how the idea of crowdsource data collection can be further utilized by providing inhabitants with simple and easy to use tools.

Advantages:

Advantages of using inhabitant’s app include improved costs, speed, quality, flexibility, scalability, and diversity.