Page 26 - MASHRAE 35th Anniversary

This article was published in ASHRAE Journal, October 2020. Copyright 2020 ASHRAE. Posted at www.ashrae.org. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE. For more information about ASHRAE Journal, visit www.ashrae.org.
center environment. While manual methods are the current industry norm, automated data collection using wireless sensor technology is now available to provide real-time data integration methods.
Finally, digital twins can be used as a method of ongoing commissioning for monitoring the data center environment. Models can be used to calibrate and validate the operation of building control systems and HVAC settings throughout various changes to IT and any optimization efforts related to energy efficiency.
Ultimately, many businesses still operate with legacy change-management policies, sluggish data collection approaches, and uncoordinated decision-making pro- cesses. In an increasingly changing world, digital twins are arguably becoming more of a necessity as they enable rapid decision-making and avoiding the sur- prises of unsupervised change management in IT environments. A well thought out digital twin implementation process can lead to sustained savings and surprise avoidance through- out the life cycle of the data center.