Dealing with and maintaining high-quality standards in the design and construction phases is challenging, especially for on-site construction. Issues like improper implementation of building components and poor communication can widen the gap between design specifications and actual conditions. To prevent this, particularly for energy-efficient buildings, it is vital to develop resilient, sustainable strategies. These should optimize resource use, minimize environmental impact, and enhance livability, contributing to carbon neutrality by 2050 and climate change mitigation. Traditional post-occupancy evaluations, which identify defects after construction, are impractical for addressing energy performance gaps. A new, real-time inspection approach is necessary throughout the construction process. This paper suggests an innovative guideline for prefabricated buildings, emphasizing digital ‘self-instruction’ and ‘self-inspection’. These procedures ensure activities impacting quality adhere to specific instructions, drawings, and 3D models, incorporating the relevant acceptance criteria to verify completion. This methodology, promoting alignment with planned energy-efficient features, is supported by BIM-based software and Augmented Reality (AR) tools, embodying Industry 4.0 principles. BIM (Building Information Modeling) and AR bridge the gap between virtual design and actual construction, improving stakeholder communication and enabling real-time monitoring and adjustments. This integration fosters accuracy and efficiency, which are key for energy-efficient and nearly zero-energy buildings, marking a shift towards a more precise, collaborative, and environmentally sensible construction industry.
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Social networks, social cohesion, and place attachment are positive social impacts that can stimulate people’s quality of life. High-rise apartment buildings are often criticized for their negative social impacts, such as social isolation and low levels of interaction and social cohesion. However, there is still insufficient empirical evidence on the relationships between neighborhood social networks, social cohesion, place attachment, and loneliness of high-rise apartment residents and how they are affected by the physical environment and neighborhood satisfaction. This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate these relationships using data collected in four high-rise apartment complexes in Hanoi, Vietnam. While the number of neighbors in someone’s social network is found to stimulate social cohesion, which can foster neighborhood attachment and reduce feelings of loneliness, the possibility of improving these social impacts is affected by urban contexts, site properties, and the ability to provide communal spaces within and surrounding the buildings.
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B4B is a multi-year, multi-stakeholder project focused on developing methods to harness big data from smart meters, building management systems and the Internet of Things devices, to reduce energy consumption, increase comfort, respond flexibly to user behaviour and local energy supply and demand, and save on installation maintenance costs. This will be done through the development of faster and more efficient Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence models and algorithms. The project is geared to existing utility buildings such as commercial and institutional buildings.
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The ambition of a transition to a sustainable society brings forth the dual challenge to preserve historical buildings and simultaneously improve the energy performance of our built environment. While engineers claim that a dramatic reduction of energy use in the built environment is feasible, it has proven to be a difficult and twisting road.In this paper we focus on historical buildings, where difficulties of energy reduction are paramount, as such buildings provide local identity and a connection to our past. It is a EU policy objective to conserve and redesign heritage buildings like prisons, military barracks, factories, stations, and schools. Such redesign should also ensure reduction of energy use without compromising historical identity. In this paper we conceptually and empirically investigate how the two conflicting aspirations unfold. In particular we elaborate the obduracy and scripts of buildings, to clarify how they resist change and invite a specific use. We analyse the tensions between identity and energy conservation in a case study of a restoration project in Franeker. This buildinghas recently undergone a restoration, with energy efficiency as one of its goals.Scripts and networks are traced by a combination of methods, such as studyinglayout, materials and building history, and qualitative interviews with restoration architects and users. We identified three types of strategies to conserve identity and energy: design strategies; identity strategies and network strategies. Such strategies are also relevant for other efforts where conservation and innovation have to be reconciled.
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It is historically a fact that Turkey experiences frequent earthquakes, on the order of one damaging earthquake of magnitude 6–7 approximately every 2 years, causing extensive losses to economy, life and limb. Every strong earthquake leaves behind poverty and tens of thousands of homeless people. In order to mitigate especially the losses of life due to earthquakes, a rapid scoring technique called the P25 – Preliminary Assessment Method is proposed herein. The purpose of the method is to determine, for a reinforced concrete-framed building, whether there is any vulnerability to collapse during a strong earthquake. By identifying those buildings, which are most likely susceptible to collapse inside a particular building stock, and consequently strengthening or demolishing them, practically no loss of life will occur. In this presentation, details of P25 – Preliminary Assessment Method are discussed and the high degree of prediction reliability of the method is demonstrated on 323 case study buildings, which experienced wide ranges of damage during past earthquakes.
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Sustaining historical buildings, with their high energy consumption, does not easily align with the ambition to promote sustainability in the built environment. In this paper we delineate the dynamics and strategies that spring from this basic tension, by following the development and use of a dedicated valuation method. Our method is derived from both Actor Network Theory and the Dynamics of Standards. The Dutch DuMo-method seeks to balance the historical value and energy performance of historical buildings in a combined metric. The historical value is assessed with expert judgment of the so-called 'touchability' of the building, expressed in a multiplying factor, whereas sustainability is measured with Greencalc+, a quantitative environmental assessment method.
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The paper briefly describes the outcome of two inventories: 1) an inventory based on fact sheets about daily use and energy consumption of historical buildings (mainly relative small churches) in the North of the Netherlands, and; 2) an inventory based on interviews with owners of historical buildings about motives to reduce energy consumption.
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How to find out what students, starters, and other new households of transformed buildings need to create a home environment with a comfortable climate without losing meanings attributed to the home?
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This paper presents a new Value Adding Management (VAM) model that aims to support decision makers in identifying appropriate interventions in buildings, other facilities and services that add value to the organisation, to manage its implementation, and to measure the output and outcomes. The paper builds on value adding management theories and models that use the triplet input-throughput-output, a distinction between output, outcome and added value, and concepts, theories and data on the impact of interventions in corporate real estate and facility services, change management and performance measurement. Furthermore, input has been used from a cross-chapter analysis of a new book in which 23 authors from five different European countries present a state of the art of theory and research on 12 value parameters: satisfaction, image, culture, health and safety, productivity, adaptability, innovation, risk, cost, value of assets, sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. The new VAM model follows the steps from the well-known Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, which are supported by various tools that were found in the literature or came to the fore in the state-of-the-art sections. In order to be able to select appropriate interventions in the Plan-phase, this paper includes a typology of typical interventions in corporate real estate and facility services that may add value to the organisation. The Check-phase is supported by an overview of ways to measure the 12 value parameters and related Key Performance Indicators. The new Value Adding Management model connects Corporate Real Estate Management (CREM) and Facilities Management (FM) with general business management in order to align CREM/FM interventions to the organizational context and organizational objectives. The VAM model opens the black box of input-throughput-output-outcome and is action oriented due to the connection to various management and measurement tools.
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Kahramanmaraş Earthquake Sequence of 6th of February is the deadliest earthquake that happened in Turkey in the era of instrumental seismology, claiming more than 55 thousand lives and leaving torn down cities and towns behind. More than 450 km long lateral strike-slip fault ruptured during these catastrophic earthquakes. As a result, more than 38 thousand buildings collapsed causing life losses. Considering that the large share of the Turkish building stock consists of RC buildings, the vulnerable RC building stock is the main responsible for this picture. Deficiencies of the Turkish RC building stock are well known since they manifested themselves several times in the past earthquakes. However, considering the improvements in the seismic codes and the seismic hazard maps achieved in the last two decades, the widespread collapse of buildings constructed after year 2000 was rather unexpected. Some of the observed structural damage patterns are similar to those observed also in the pre-2000 buildings in recent earthquakes, however, some other types of damages, such as out-of-plane bending and shear failures or shear-friction capacity failure of RC walls, brittle fracture and bond-slip failure of reinforcement, tension failure of beams and slabs are usually not witnessed. This paper presents a carefully selected set of examples comparing the pre-2000 and post-2000 building damages and collapses, also referring to a detailed summary and comparison of the code developments in Turkey.
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