Danish climate platform receives DKK 1.2 million for research project with the Royal Danish Academy

AI agents to be integrated into building projects from the earliest design stage: Danish company NTI Real-Time LCA has been awarded funding from Innovation Fund Denmark for a research collaboration with the Royal Danish Academy. More specifically, the funding will support an Industrial Postdoc position for the company’s specialist, Dr Kilian Speiser, who serves as AI Lead within the team. Over the next 18 months, he will work with the Academy’s CITA department to develop “uncertainty-aware” AI agents capable of automating climate calculations at the very earliest stages of building design, when information is often incomplete, unavailable or subject to considerable uncertainty.

The grant from Innovation Fund Denmark marks the start of a new collaboration between one of the market’s leading LCA platforms and the Royal Danish Academy. Through to the end of 2027, a newly established Industrial Postdoc position affiliated with the Academy’s CITA department for digital development will explore, in close collaboration between the two partners, how AI agents can provide earlier and better insights into climate data in construction projects.

Bringing climate data into the process earlier

The project has been in development for some time, says Martin Romby Hauge, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of NTI Real-Time LCA. He welcomes the opportunity to bring together an entrepreneurial technology environment and academic research in an area that is critical to reducing the climate impact of Danish construction.

“As an international Danish technology company, we are delighted to be entering into a formal collaboration with academia, and in particular with the Royal Danish Academy and its team. Together, we expect to contribute to greater efficiency and a lower environmental impact from construction. The vast majority of a building’s climate impact is determined during the very early design stages. Yet this is also where the underlying data is most uncertain and least complete,” he says, adding:

“As the CO₂ limit values for construction are tightened again as early as 2027, we need support from new technologies. We see significant potential in uncertainty-aware AI agents that can support and automate LCA calculations during the early design stages while also making uncertainties in the underlying data more visible. With the funding from Innovation Fund Denmark, combined with our own investment, we can now accelerate the research and development of the technology required.”

AI agents to be developed and validated

Working with Martin Tamke and Nadja Gaudillière-Jami from the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA) at the Royal Danish Academy, Kilian Speiser, who holds a PhD in Construction Informatics, will lead the development and validation of the AI agents.

The aim is for the agents to support climate-related decision-making from the very beginning of the design process, thereby helping both consultants and developers move towards more climate-conscious construction.

From research to construction practice

“Through many years of research into simulation and artificial intelligence in architectural design processes, we have seen that decision-making in construction is increasingly dependent on data and digital models that often assume a level of information that simply does not exist during the early design stages. If we are to succeed with the green transition and the move towards more circular and bio-based building solutions, we need to develop tools capable of dealing with uncertainty and gaps in the available data. We see significant potential in agentic AI as part of the solution and look forward to exploring this through an Industrial Postdoc project with direct relevance to the future of construction practice,” says Martin Tamke, Associate Professor at CITA at the Royal Danish Academy.

In parallel, the ambition is to integrate the new technology into the NTI Real-Time LCA platform, making the resulting technology widely accessible to the Danish construction industry.

About CITA at the Royal Danish Academy

CITA (Centre for Information Technology and Architecture) at the Royal Danish Academy conducts research into digital architecture, artificial intelligence, and the future of bio-based and circular building practices. A key challenge in the green transition is that decisions about materials, structures and carbon footprints are made early in the design process, precisely when data is most uncertain and incomplete. CITA therefore develops new digital methods and AI-based tools that can make this uncertainty visible and manageable, enabling architects, engineers and developers to make better-informed decisions about sustainable solutions. Through its collaboration with NTI Real-Time LCA, the centre contributes research on uncertainty-aware AI agents that can support carbon and resource assessments in the earliest stages of design, thereby accelerating the transition towards more circular and bio-based construction.

About NTI Real-Time LCA

Real-Time LCA is now part of NTI Group – a well-established international provider of digital solutions for building, design, manufacturing and construction. NTI Group was founded in Denmark in 1945 and is now represented in 14 countries.

The Real-Time LCA platform is used by leading developers, consultants and architects – both in Denmark and internationally – to integrate carbon documentation and LCA calculations directly into construction processes and projects.