"Exciting, although extremely demanding" Giorgio Agugiaro's Mobility in Munich

He spent seven months in Munich, at the Institute for Geoinformatics: Giorgio Agugiaro, researcher with the 3DOM Unit at the Center for Materials and Microsystems of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK- CMM). Like his 18 colleagues, Agugiaro, a native of Padua, who has been working at FBK since May 2010, participated in the first edition of FBK’s "Mobility" that allowed him to spend a long period of study and work in Germany. Also in 2014, the international mobility program, established by Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, will grant scholarships to researchers with the aim of fostering their professional growth through international mobility opportunities at national and international research centers and organizations, thus intensifying relations with the scientific community and bringing new skills and knowledge to FBK.

Date: 
03/12/2013

In the short interview below, the story of Giorgio Agugiaro’s experience.

1. Dr. Agugiaro, how would you define, with two adjectives, the period of study and work you spent at the Institute for Geoinformatics ( Lehrstuhl für Geoinformatics ) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) ?

Exciting, although extremely demanding. Exciting, because I had access to a close-knit working group that deals with issues that, in my view, are topical. And I learned so many new things! Demanding, because I found myself working crazy hours, more than those my colleagues and I normaly work at 3DOM...

2 . What topics of your research have found innovative developments within the "enercity" project?

Since 2009 it is mandatory for all new buildings (and for substantially renovated ones or in the case of rentals or purchases) to include among the documents a certificate stating the average energy consumption for the concerned building unit. This is an important step towards the understanding of the existing built assets, but it is likely that the bulk of the buildings built prior to 2009 will remain uncensored (except as provided by law), thus creating a "patchy" energy mapping of the city.

Enercity, my project, aims at estimating energy requirement (for heating) of all residential buildings of a city. In particular, I have used a 3D virtual model of the city to adapt and implement algorithms for estimating the energy requirements of each building. The ability to estimate and map the consumption for an entire city in this way represents an innovative approach, of which there are now a few examples globally and, in general, is a research topic on which energy and resources are being invested worldwide..

3 . In which way is the research carried out by researchers at TUM related to the studies you were conducting at FBK?

I would say that the know-how of German colleagues is perfectly complementary with what we do at the FBK 3DOM Unit, which focuses on creating metric models using high-resolution survey and 3D modeling. The scale at which we operate is wide, from a single object to the urban/territorial landscape. In the case of an urban £D model, we reconstruct (for example) the group of buildings to a level of detail sufficiently accurate for the type of application that will be developed.

The Munich colleagues are specialized in the management and in the enrichment of these models with heterogeneous data, and in the context of energy simulations on an urban scale, starting from 3D city models. As I am the person that stands, within 3DOM, exactly halfway between the two worlds, it was relatively easy for me to interact and create synergies between the two areas of science, namely three-dimensional survey and modeling and Geoinformatics.

4 . More generally, what sort of impact on the local area will the research you developed have?

As an area of ​​study, I chose a district of Trento in order to directly test on the local Trentino territory the new methodologies developed and promote new synergies with public and private organizations directly or indirectly involved. Among other things, beyond the strictly energy related aspects, having a 3D model of the city brings several benefits in terms of centralized and structured data management. If one thinks of the integrated representation and management of cadastral data, or registrar data, or the archives of build permits...

5 . Are there future collaborations with the Munich working group in the pipeline?

For sure. Even if the mobility stay has ended, the contacts remain; thanks to the geographical proximity, I can also go back and forth with relative ease.

6 . Tell us a story and/or describe for us a person that has characterized your stay.

What I really appreciated during my stay in Munich was that they invited me right away to give seminars and specific lectures to students during the academic semester on topics related to my research work. I think that, for my German colleagues, the fact that it was not the first time that I have lived in Germany and that I already spoke the language, was an added value.

(m.l)