A green urban future
The theme for this year’s AUHF conference focused on a “Green Urban Future for Affordable Housing” highlighting the impact that climate change has on low-income communities and the pressing need to make green, affordable housing available to these
iLima Digital Foundary is disrupting the current construction process by harnessing AI, big data, robotics, and industrialized construction technologies to accelerate the construction of affordable housing and sustainable smart villages for Africa.
Launching their new Building Configurator at the African Union for Housing Finance (AUHF) Conference and Annual General Meeting (AGM) taking place in Windhoek, Namibia from 31 October to the 2 November 2023, iLima CEO Karsten Popp, stated, “We are proud to launch our first AI-driven Construction Innovation Platform (ACIP) product here in Windhoek at the 2023 AUHF conference. The iLima ACIP Building Configurator is the first step towards the development of the holistic iLima Sustainable Smart Village ACIP AI Platform.”
Affordable Housing Backlog
Historic, economic and socio challenges have resulted in a backlog of affordable housing in South Africa and Sub–Saharan Africa of more than 3.6 million and 44 million, respectively. The current approach is not solving the problem and the backlog is growing. “Traditional building processes are no longer deemed adequate and are considered too costly, time consuming with too little transparency to address this pressing housing backlog challenge, “ says Popp.
The iLima ACIP Sustainable Smart Village AI Platform completely transforms the current “silo approach” to building introducing a data-driven holistic, integrated lifecycle view of the Sustainable Smart Village. ACIP uses historic, current and predictive data over the life cycle to model, measure and manage the processes for an optimal Smart Village outcome. Accurate and timely intelligence reduces risks for all stakeholders throughout the building life cycle. ACIP supports the realization of a Sustainable Smart Village over the complete life cycle reducing costs, time, waste and increasing quality, sustainability and transparency.
“In addition to traditional building processes no longer being adequate, designing houses is a complicated process and intimidating for many. We remove this, enabling people to answer simple questions allowing them to design their home in less than 5 minutes, while providing analytics for developers to understand the future focus, and creating a place where we can host a marketplace for future housing”, states Popp.
Create Once, Build Many
The ACIP Building Configurator enables the once-off design of a modular building with subsequent reuse of the design and engineering allowing for the creation of multiple buildings by re-using and re-configuring the initial design. In addition, pre-approvals from municipalities and other governing bodies reduces the time required to go to market.
The ACIP Village Configurator allows the user to configure communities that suit the terrain, type of occupation, weather conditions and income/funding. The Village Configurator ensures a fast automated way to establish infrastructure (roads, sewage, water, electricity, internet/data etc.) as well as add buildings that can be configured to suit the particular situation. The Village Configurator takes into account affordability and budget constraints. It also takes into account community requirements.
Ilima ACIP Building Configurator – Features
- Multiple exterior options to choose from
- Multiple construction technologies to choose from
- Homes are upgradable
- Allows real Time Changes & interations
- Automated production of Submittal set
- Visualization – 3D Walkthroughs
- Constant learning – Constant improvement
- Industrial construction (DFMA) ready
- Predictable Pricing and Schedule
Repeatability, Scalability and Investability
“Sustainable supply chains develop with collaboration, leveraging the best available technologies, setting consistent standards, and communicating success stories. In partnership with iLima we’ve made significant progress to develop a community co-created Factory-as-a-Product (FaaP) that will revolutionize the way society will produce food, monetise energy, convert waste into resources and; collect – and treat water within the circular green economy. These modules are integrated to breed circular economy SMME’s, new inventions and pioneers. The FaaP modules will be continuously strengthened with iLima’s Platform, and our Net Zero Nexus certification system will ensure repeatability, scalability and investability”, says Prof Tiaan Oosthuizen, CEO at the Institute of Technology and Society.