bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Investigating the role of emissions deriving from user transport in sustainable refurbishment strategies for buildings relying on low-carbon energy.
Authors: Fahlstedt O , Bohne R A 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Refurbishing existing buildings constitutes a significant role in reducing emissions from the built environment. Their optimization demands time simultaneously to the urgency to fulfill the sustainable development goals 9,11, 12, and 13. Therefore, actions taken at the municipal level are deterministic for future outcomes as many municipalities manage large building portfolios and thus hold significant mitigation potential. This paper investigates the role existing institutional buildings have for greenhouse gas abatement when the scope is expanded from building scale to include the urban environment. The aim is to determine the importance of considering the location of buildings when evaluating refurbishment strategies. There is a potential for a more significant reduction of emissions when including user transportation. The role of travel-induced emissions from users, visitors, and employees in institutional buildings is potentially more critical than refurbishment for buildings already operating on low-carbon energy. Parts of a previously developed theoretical framework are tested to aid a Norwegian municipality in its emissions abatement strategy. The study assesses the carbon emissions deriving from refurbishment and the location of an institutional building. Inventory data from building, transport routes, and transport modes are assessed with a case study approach, while generic data derives from literature. The result indicates the importance of addressing locations of institutional buildings within the urban form rather than optimizing separate entities. Truncation errors can offset the benefit of building optimization in areas dependent on low-carbon electricity if travel-induced emissions are omitted from the assessment. The framework reveals that it is better to build a new building at another location in some instances when transport-related emissions are reduced.
Measuring the Cityscape: A Pipeline from Street-Level Capture to Urban Quantification
Authors: Ward W , Dai M , Arbabi H , Sun Y , Tingley D , Mayfield M 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Any solution to achieving climate targets must be performed at scale. Data driven methods allow expert modelling to be emulated over a large scope. In the UK, there are nearly 30 million residential properties, contributing to over 30% of the national energy consumption. As part of the UK Government’s requirement to meet net-zero emissions by 2050, retrofitting residential buildings forms a significant part of the national strategy. This work addresses the problem of identifying, characterising and quantifying urban features at scale. A pipeline incorporating photogrammetry, automatic labelling using machine learning, and 3-D geometry has been developed to automatically reconstruct and extract dimensional and spatial features of a building from street-level mobile sensing.
Piezoelectric Textile Facade for the energy supply of active sensor technology with regard to data management for circular economy in building construction
Authors: Raudaschl M , Levak T , Riewe R , Triantafyllidis G , Drnda E , Popek S , Schlegl D , Funke-Kaiser D , Lund A 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
The high GWP potential of construction requires a holistic approach such as circular economy. Currently, common joining, construction and planning practices result in heterogeneous assemblies of different components that are difficult to deconstruct. Furthermore, there is currently little information and data on building components used and the climatic impacts on them. In this context and with the intention of recording long-term (circular) processes in construction, the Piezo-Klett basic research project (FFG no. 879459) funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) deals with the energy supply of active sensor technology in construction by combining the hook and loop fastener with piezoelectric components. The aim is to open new perspectives on sustainable energy production systems by transforming buildings into energy carriers and generators, analogous to a “battery”. To this purpose, the result presented in this conference paper is a description of the constructive structure (climatic impacts, construction, piezo technology) of a “Piezoelectric Textile Facade” as well as test results on piezo tapes. This opens new possibilities in the context of the application of hook-and-loop fasteners, the energy supply of active sensor technologies as well as in the field of data acquisition and data management.
Deep multimodal learning for residential building energy prediction
Authors: Sheng Y , Ward W OC , Arbabi H , Álvarez M , Mayfield M 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
The residential sector has become the second-largest energy consumer since 1987 in the UK. Approximately 24 million existing dwellings in England made up over 32% of the overall energy consumption in 2020. A robust understanding of existing buildings’ energy performance is therefore critical in guiding proper home retrofit measures to accelerate towards meeting the UK’s climate targets. A substantial number of predictions at a city scale rely on available data, e.g., Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and GIS products, to develop statistical and machine learning models to estimate energy consumption. However, issues with existing data are not negligible. This work adopted the idea of deep multimodal learning to study the potential for using Google Street View (GSV) images as an additional input for residential building energy prediction. 20,031 GSV images of 5,933 residential buildings in central Barnsley, UK, have been selected for a case study. All images were pre-processed using a state-of-the-art object detection algorithm to minimise the noise caused by other elements that may appear nearby. Building specifications that cannot be easily determined by the appearance are extracted from existing EPC information as text-based inputs for prediction. A multimodal model was designed to jointly take images and texts as inputs. These inputs are first propagated through a convolutional neural network and multi-layer perceptron, respectively, before being combined into a connected network for final energy prediction. The multi-input model was trained and tested on the case study area and predicted an annual energy consumption with a mean absolute difference of 0.01kWh/m2 per annum on average compared with what is recorded in the EPC. The difference between the predicted results and the EPC may also provide some hints on the bias the certificates potentially contain.
Automatic verification of urban index compliance: A case study for Brazilian buildings
Authors: Villaschi F S , Carvalho J P , Bragança L 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Urban planning has become an essential tool for regulating the cities’ growth, maintaining the local urban identity and providing a good quality of life for its inhabitants. In Brazil, the master plan is the primary policy instrument for urban development and expansion. It defines the common requirements that designers must follow when preparing building projects. Up to date, such projects are verified in project latter stages and eventually approved by the city halls, with a manual calculation and assessment process. This procedure creates both the need to assess project compliance earlier to avoid rework and changes, as well as to automate project verification compliance, to reduce human errors. With the emergence of new technologies and computational systems, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), creates the opportunity for process automation, by providing the required data to support decision making, as well as to automate the calculation process both for designers and municipalities. Thus, this research aims to develop an assessment procedure which automates the compliance assessment of a set of urban requirements from Vila Velha, Brazil. A BIM model was developed in Autodesk Revit to prove the procedure functionality and Dynamo was used to automate data collection and the calculation of three different indexes from Vila Velha’s building code. By providing a fast and reliable analysis, the research framework provides designers with a real-time decision support tool, which indicates building compliance in the project’s early stages. It also provides municipalities with a calculation tool, which can be used to assess the compliance of submitted BIM models, sparing time and avoiding assessment errors. Overall, the procedure has the potential to support building project design, increase process efficiency and accelerate the verification of mandatory requirements. It also offers the possibility for replication by adapting the routine to the mandatory requirements of each location.
Optimising the Balance Between Flexibility and Structural Mass for Lower Short- and Long-Term Embodied Carbon Emissions in Mass Housing
Authors: Gosling S , Tingley D D 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
The building construction industry is one of the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions. One solution to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint is to design structures efficiently, thus using less structural mass. However, over-designing is a fundamental aspect of flexibility; a building’s capacity to make physical changes in the future – which is key for domestic buildings in particular. It is therefore important to strike a balance between structural efficiency and high flexibility, to limit both short- and long-term embodied carbon emissions. This balance was investigated using a mass housing case study, creating a series of design iterations to explore the trade-off between flexibility and structural mass. An optimum solution illustrated that this case study can be redesigned to have double the flexibility, lower structural mass, and less carbon-intensive materials. Therefore, this research concluded that it is possible to significantly reduce the short-term embodied carbon emissions of this housing design, whilst simultaneously reducing long-term emissions too. Although these findings might be specific to this case study, the duplicate nature of mass housing means that the carbon savings of this one housing design can be multiplied many times across a whole development. Applying this research to other mass housing designs could significantly reduce the embodied carbon of future developments and improve the carbon footprint of the building construction industry.
Clustering Strategies for Defining Archetypes to Support Integrated Simulations of Environmental Impacts
Authors: Gomes V , Zara O O C , Colleto G M , da Silva M G 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Life cycle assessment (LCA)’s inherent data-intensiveness hampers application to neighbourhood environmental assessments, particularly for built stock modelling. Data collection can be reduced to a manageable amount by grouping a large number of buildings into a limited set of aggregates with similar characteristics and defining exemplars (archetypes) that represent each group. LCAs would be performed for the archetypes only and their results extended to the represented buildings. As archetype definition is seldom detailed in the literature, this paper tests, and details different procedures that could enable neighbourhood LCAs. K-medoids and CLARA partition algorithms, as well as agglomerative hierarchical clustering techniques, were applied to group over 300 buildings into a limited number of clusters. A building representative of each cluster was identified to proceed to bottom-up LCA. K-medoids clustering stands out for the quality of clusters and their representatives. Restraining the maximum number of clusters to keep subsequent LCA work manageable imposes some quality loss yet allows for achieving satisfactory division results. Regardless of the clustering technique used, data was the best divided the larger the number of clusters used, for the various factors in the database depicting the studied area resulted in several possible data combinations. Although detailed representation is desirable in LCA modelling, limiting the number of variables facilitates data pre-treatment and an optimal balance should be pursued in future studies.
Smart logistics for urban construction sites (CCC)
Authors: Maatar O , Trost R , De Bruyne I , Van Dromme H , Berroir F 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
The traditional construction logistics is managed in silos, which leads to time losses on sites and increased project costs due to repeated handling/moving of materials. Moreover, these uncontrolled flows of deliveries also have a proved environmental impact. Alternative approaches intend to centralize these flows using a Construction Consolidation Centre (CCC), which allows to deliver material just-in-time as a kit, directly at the workplace. The purpose of this research is to evaluate if this supply chain management methods can drive the construction sectors towards more efficient and sustainable practices. Therefore, this paper describes, from the General Contractor’s perspective, the implementation of a CCC between 2019 and 2020 for a Residential Tower project, for the first time in Luxembourg. Increased productivity, reduced costs, and reduced carbon footprint of the transportation flows were observed based on measures throughout the entire project. Beyond these evidences that more sustainable practices are achievable in construction, the paper discusses adherence of workers and subcontractors as well as organisational and technological prerequisites and perspectives. Accordingly, this collaborative model appears as a relevant way to build and strengthen partnerships between the construction stakeholders by improving day-to-day work. Therefore, CCC and kitting appear as a practical solution for the current economic and environmental challenges and more awareness should be put on this topic to allow its diffusion to the whole sector.
Greenhouse gas reduction strategies for building materials: A reality check with the climate targets
Authors: Alaux N , Truger B , Hoxha E , Ruschi Mendes Saade M , Passer A 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
The increasing importance of the embodied emissions in the life cycle of buildings has led to a growing interest in strategies supporting their mitigation. In this paper are presented the environmental impacts of 10 variants of a single-family house assessed with the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. A set of potential technological improvements and strategies are applied at the material level. Their influence at the building level is discussed and the resulting global warming potentials are compared to the COP21 targets for Austrian buildings. Finally, potential trade-offs in 9 other environmental impact categories are explored. The results show that, when incorporating all of the assessed strategies for emission reduction, the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be reduced up to 87% at the material level and 50% at the building level. Carbon capture and storage and the use of bio-based materials are to be credited for the highest share of these reductions. However, there is no version of this building that fulfils the COP21 targets. Other pathways, which do not solely rely on material-related technological improvements, should be investigated. A more radical change of the building industry might even be necessary. Overall, the implementation of the strategies decreased the environmental impacts in almost every impact category, except for freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity.
Development of sustainable building standards: Next steps towards climate-friendly buildings in the City of Graz
Authors: Scherz M. , Maierhofer D. , Passer A. , Kreiner H. 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
To make efforts for climate protection in the City of Graz (Austria) as effective as possible, the city has established a climate protection fund, from which the KNB (Klimafreundliche und Nachhaltige Baustandards) project emerged. In the KNB project, a new approach was developed on how the city can already request and implement sustainability criteria for its public buildings in architectural competitions. This paper presents the methodology for evaluating the climate friendliness of building concepts based on the developed form “sustainability and climate protection”. Moreover, an evaluation algorithm for assessing the competition works and ranking the building concepts is presented. To demonstrate the applicability and validate the form and the evaluation algorithm, we applied the procedure to a real architectural competition. The results show that all participants were able to consider the required aspects and that the external experts for sustainability assessment were able to evaluate the competition works using the developed evaluation algorithm. The City of Graz set the goal to apply this methodology in all further architectural competition and thereby take a further step towards sustainable procurement of buildings.
Next generation of life cycle related benchmarks for low carbon residential buildings in Germany
Authors: Özdemir Ö , Hartmann C , Hafner A , König H , Lützkendorf T 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Germany’s national climate targets are in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and set the ambitious goal of becoming net zero emissions by 2045. The construction and real estate sector play an important role for sustainable development. In a cross-sectoral approach operational and embodied emissions of buildings account for 40% of GHG emissions in Germany. In order to contribute to climate protection, it is necessary to both pursue a strategy for decarbonizing the national building stock and to develop benchmarks for assessing greenhouse gas emissions in the life cycle of individual buildings. In Germany, benchmarks are used in sustainability assessment systems for more than 10 years to assess primary energy non-renewable (PENRT) and global warming potential (GWP) in the life cycle of buildings. Therefore, these need to be regularly reviewed and further developed in order to (1) adapt them to more ambitious reduction targets, (2) consider the current database, (3) include the state of standardization, and (4) follow the state of scientific discussion on methodological issues. This paper identifies new benchmarks for PENRT and GWP and shows the scale of current levels of performance. These can form the basis for funding programs and contribute to the discussion on the introduction of binding legal requirements.
Existing benchmark systems for assessing global warming potential of buildings – Analysis of IEA EBC Annex 72 cases
Authors: Rasmussen F N , Trigaux D , Alsema E , Balouktsi M , Birgisdóttir H , Bohne R , Dixit M , Dowdell D , Francart N , Frischknecht R , Foliente G , Lupisek A , Lützkendorf T , Malmqvist T , Garcia Martinez A , Ouellet-Plamondon C , Passer A , Peuportier B , Ramseier L , Satola D , Seo S , Szalay Z , Wiik M 
Published: September 2022

AbstractLife cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and actors to assess the global warming potential (GWP) of building activities. In several countries, life cycle based requirements on GWP are currently being incorporated into building regulations. After the establishment of general calculation rules for building LCA, a crucial next step is to evaluate the performance of the specific building design. For this, reference values or benchmarks are needed, but there are several approaches to defining these. This study presents an overview of existing benchmark systems documented in seventeen cases from the IEA EBC Annex 72 project on LCA of buildings. The study characterizes their different types of methodological background and displays the reported values. Full life cycle target values for residential and non-residential buildings are found around 10-20 kg CO2e/m2/y, whereas reference values are found between 20-80 kg CO2e/m2/y. Possible embodied target- and reference values are found between 1-12 kg CO2e/m2/y for both residential and non-residential buildings. Benchmark stakeholders can use the insights from this study to understand the justifications of the background methodological choices and to gain an overview of the level of GWP performance across benchmark systems.
Towards indicative baseline and decarbonization pathways for embodied life cycle GHG emissions of buildings across Europe
Authors: Röck M , Allacker K , Auinger M , Balouktsi M , Birgisdottir H , Fields M , Frischknecht R , Habert G , Hvid Horup Sørensen L , Kuittinen M , Le Den X , Lynge K , Muller A , Nibel S , Passer A , Piton F , Rasmussen F N , Ruschi Mendes Saade M , Alaux N , Satola D , Sørensen A , Spitsbaard M , Tikka S , Tozan B , Truger B , Van Leeuwen M , Vesson M , Viitala A , Zonnevijlle R , Lützkendorf T 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Buildings’ construction and operation are major contributors to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the substantial reduction of GHG emissions across their full life cycle is required to enable meeting international climate targets. For effective climate change mitigation - as recent studies have shown - a special focus has to be put on lowering embodied GHG emissions, i.e., emissions related to construction production manufacturing and construction processes, maintenance and replacement as well as end-of-life processing. As the importance of reducing embodied GHG emissions rises, so does the need for understanding both the baseline and pathways for reduction across the full life cycle of buildings. In this paper, we offer insights into the data-driven analysis of embodied GHG emissions across the whole life cycle of buildings from recent studies. Our investigation builds on the data collection, processing and harmonisation of around 1.000 building LCA case studies. We offer an integrated perspective on GHG emissions across the life cycle of buildings, considering historical trends, current baselines and indicative reduction pathways for embodied GHG emissions in different countries across Europe. This serves to inform our current ‘decade of action’ and the transformation to a regenerative built environment by 2050.