How can research data management help preserve bridges, improve buildings, and make our built environment more sustainable? In the latest episode of the NFDI podcast, our co-spokesperson Prof. Dr. Jakob Beetz (RWTH Aachen) discusses the importance of digitalisation in the construction and infrastructure sectors, and explains how better research data management can help preserve critical infrastructure, improve sustainability, and enable smarter decision-making throughout the lifecycle of buildings and bridges.
Germany’s aging infrastructure & the “building performance gap”
The episode explores the challenges of managing data across the entire lifecycle of buildings and infrastructure. Inspection reports, sensor data, scans, photographs, plans, and maintenance records are often stored in disconnected systems, making it difficult to detect patterns, assess risks, or plan renovations efficiently. This becomes especially critical for aging infrastructure such as bridges: Germany alone has around 70,000 bridges, many of them facing similar structural and material challenges.
Prof. Beetz also highlights the risks of data loss in the built environment. Important information about older structures often exists only in analogue form or disappears after projects end and personnel change. Yet these historical data are essential for long-term maintenance and renovation strategies.
Another focus of the episode is the so-called building performance gap: the discrepancy between planned and actual energy consumption in buildings. Without reliable and interoperable data, realistic evaluations are difficult.
The episode further addresses key questions around data ownership, privacy, and openness: How can sensitive infrastructure information be protected while still enabling data reuse for research and innovation?
About Jakob Beetz
Prof. Dr. Jakob Beetz is Professor of Design Computation at the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University. His research focuses on the digitalisation of the built environment and on making data from architecture, construction, and infrastructure sustainably reusable and interoperable.
NFDI podcast
The NFDI podcast focuses on activities of the NFDI consortia and on FAIR research data management. It covers topics such as data sovereignty, AI, ethics and forward-looking technologies. It is available on acast, Spotify, Apple, and the NFDI Youtube channel.