Social and Environmental Impacts of Digitalization
摘要
In many countries, the building sector has a significant impact on other sectors of the economy, local employment, and quality of life. The digitalization of the building sector is often perceived as providing new services and business models, offering opportunities to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This development has been accelerated by advances in information and communication technologies: computed-aided design, 3D printing, robotics, augmented and virtual reality, building information modeling, and other cyberphysical systems. For example, the concept of smart building is emerging as a solution for creating sustainable and comfortable living and working spaces. At the same time, digital transformation is disrupting various aspects of the project lifecycle, from design to construction and management. This multidisciplinary evolution makes it difficult to assess social and environmental impacts. Faced with this complexity, the methodological steps comprise elaboration of models with systemic approach, listing the variables, description of relationships, and identification of the key variables with MICMAC method. In this way, the systemic approach complements the usual analytical representation of the building sector. The results provide an original systemic representation of the impacts of digitalization of the building sector. They reveal variations in the comprehensiveness of digital transformation. The opportunities and threats of digital transformation, as well as human-machine interface, are discussed. In conclusion, this study highlights that the social and environmental impacts of digitalization differ depending on whether it concerns the construction or building sector, and whether the design paradigms are industrial or non-industrial.