Digital Building Twins and Blockchain for Performance-Based (Smart) Contracts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel integration of digital building twins with blockchain smart contracts to enable transparent, automated performance-based payments in the built environment, demonstrating a full-stack prototype implementation.

Contribution

It presents the first full-stack implementation connecting digital building twins with blockchain smart contracts for performance-based digital payments.

Findings

Successful integration of Ethereum blockchain with building twins and sensors

Real-time performance data evaluation and automated rewards execution

Feasibility demonstrated through a prototype on Siemens platform

Abstract

Performance contracts used for servitized business models enable consideration of overall life-cycle costs rather than just production costs. However, practical implementation of performance contracts has been limited due to challenges with performance evaluation, accountability, and financial concepts. As a solution, this paper proposes the connection of the digital building twin with blockchain-based smart contracts to execute performance-based digital payments. First, we conceptualize a technical architecture to connect blockchain to digital building twins. The digital building twin stores and evaluates performance data in real-time while the blockchain ensures transparency and trusted execution of automatic performance evaluation and rewards through smart contracts. Next, we demonstrate the feasibility of both the concept and technical architecture by integrating the Ethereum blockchain with digital building models and sensors via the Siemens building twin platform. The resulting prototype is the first full-stack implementation of a performance-based smart contract in the built environment.