The National Buildings Observatory: the Open Street Map of buildings in France for the energy transition

Only six months after its launch, theONB file extension already has more than 10.000 users: businesses, public authorities and citizens find the finest and most up-to-date data there, ranging from vacant buildings, degraded housing and fuel poverty. The objective: to provide structured and qualified knowledge to all building stakeholders in decision-making and taking action.

URBS: the agility of an innovative company combined with the strength of public research

URBS (Urban Retrofit Business Services) is an impact company founded in 2019 by two data enthusiasts: Maximilien Brossard, geomatics engineer, and Jonathan Villot, teacher-researcher and scientific manager of the MS Expert in Energy Efficiency in the Renovation of Buildings in Mines Saint-Etienne. It is quite naturally that geographic data science and energy renovation of buildings intersected to give birth to URBS

With a team of 12 engineers, their leitmotif is to develop a company with a mission with committed employees while rethinking the model of the innovative company, ensuring growth in equity.

ONB, the digital twin of the built environment

While the digital twin of the territory is causing a lot of ink to flow, the ONB proposes to structure the bases of the first digital twin of the national building stock, at the scale of the address. URBS thus wished to accelerate this process of access to information for public and private structures, and this, in a collective way.

The ONB is a platform giving access to open or even contracted data, a purpose specific to public action. In a few words, the ONB merges very fragmented data from different services and sources, to make them consistent and enrich them. Thus, economic actors have access to structured and qualified information improving their decision-making and their taking action.

These data, open and accessible, also help citizens understand public decisions: vacancy of housing, renovation and fuel poverty, degraded habitats... From collection to delivery of data, the ONB rhymes with openness and collaboration. And is completely free!

Already, more than 10.000 users save time thanks to the ONB

Today, more than 10.000 users regularly use the ONB: public structures (local or national) at 50%, but also social landlords, design offices, teacher-researchers and students, architects, real estate agents, notaries, insurers and banks, diagnosticians, journalists and individuals.

Everyone finds in the ONB an invaluable time saver and a source of actionable and qualified data for their trades. While they should spend several months looking for information on various online services, the ONB gives them access in a few clicks, as reported by the Parisian Climate Agency within the framework of the Public Energy Data Service: “ Instant identification, observed time savings of 6 to 9 months”.

For Arnaud LE CAM, Fluids and Energy Project Manager at Thalem Ingénierie: “I was able to log on to the observatory and enjoy all the data available to those involved in energy renovation! A nice start of the year gift. So much ground covered since the origins of the project in 2015: congratulations, and look forward to the next twists! »

Next planned evolutions of the ONB:

• continue to update and enrich the catalog of accessible data by adding, in particular, information related to building permits,
• structure and allow the community to discuss their data practices and uses,
• provide APIs to connect or develop new services to the data repository.

The long-term objective: to become the Open Street Map of buildings in France and contribute to the geocommons thanks to the exhaustiveness and self-management of information by the community.

To access the ONB, click here.