Unlocking whole-building retrofit through virtual modelling and real-world simulation

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Mortar IO is an early-stage software business, founded in 2022, with the mission to enable building energy efficiency retrofits to happen at the greatest speed and scale. Our mission seeks to tackle one of the UK's greatest net zero challenges based on place, with the UK's building stock being the oldest and leakiest in Europe. 29 million buildings will need to be retrofitted before 2050 to achieve the UK's net zero ambitions, according to the UK Green Building Council, while the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors have warned that the pace of retrofitting remains far too slow. Our project tackles this mission. We will develop our data driven digital software application in collaboration with the London Borough of Barnet. Our application is a virtual modelling and simulation web-based software platform, which creates 3D virtual models of existing buildings. With these models, users can simulate hundreds of retrofitting measures in different sequences to figure out the optimal route to retrofitting a single building, or a portfolio of buildings, according to their own budget and time constraints. Because the retrofitting measures simulated cover all improvements that increase the efficiency of both power and heat, our project seeks to tackle these two important net zero challenges. The benefit of our application is that it increases the accuracy of retrofit planning, thereby decreasing the risk of retrofit interventions not producing the intended energy efficiency savings. Moreover, our application is agnostic to building type and can be used for both residential and commercial properties. Ultimately, this gives any user more confidence in the plans they develop using the application, so they can move more quickly towards implementation.