Opportunities of Natural Resources Making Buildings More Resilient

An overview is given of the state-of-the-art of natural and hybrid ventilation in buildings in general. The focus of this paper is on boundary conditions for openable windows. As a case study the Co Creation Centre at the TU-Delft is discussed. Occupants live in their own houses and often in an office or other working environments as well. Due...

Legislation and practice: the case of historic concrete buildings

Purpose: Only recently have historic concrete buildings received attention and the need for their protection has been understood. Their listing as architectural heritage in most countries is ruled by legislations. The research carried out within the framework of the CONSECH20 JPI project on the conservation of historic concrete buildings in...

Low-Voltage dc System Building Blocks: Integrated Power Flow Control and Short Circuit Protection

Low-voltage direct current (LVdc) systems are a promising technology for systems with a high penetration of renewable sources and storage that operate with bidirectional power flow. In this article, a fundamental building block for LVdc is presented for different applications, such as charge controllers, voltage regulation in street-lighting...

Spatial Building Typology – Function Follows Form

Buildings today are subject to change. New functions are accommodated in vacant buildings. This is a favorable development from both a sustainability point of view and a cultural-historical perspective. Originally, the volume and form of a building was dictated by its original function: form follows function. We now see that a spatial form is...

Circular Digital Built Environment: An Emerging Framework

Digital technologies are considered to be an essential enabler of the circular economy in various industries. However, to date, very few studies have investigated which digital technologies could enable the circular economy in the built environment. This study specifically focuses on the built environment as one of the largest, most energy- and...

Environmental design guidelines for circular building components: The case of the circular building structure

Transitioning to a circular built environment can reduce the environmental impacts, resource consumption and waste generation emanating from buildings. However, there are many options to design circular building components, and limited knowledge on which options lead to the best environmental performance. Few guidelines exist and they build...

An Approach to Map Visibility in The Built Environment from Airborne LiDAR Point Clouds

Sustainable development can only be achieved with an innovative improvement from the way we currently analyze, design, build and manage our urban spaces. Current digital analysis and design methods for cities, such as visibility analysis, deeply rely on mapping and modeling techniques. However, most methods fall short of depicting the real...

Development of a life cycle assessment allocation approach for circular economy in the built environment

Transitioning the built environment to a circular economy (CE) is vital to achieve sustainability goals but requires metrics. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can analyse the environmental performance of CE. However, conventional LCA methods assess individual products and single life cycles whereas circular assessment requires a systems...

Scalable distributed sensor fault diagnosis for smart buildings

The enormous energy use of the building sector and the requirements for indoor living quality that aim to improve occupants'productivity and health, prioritize Smart Buildings as an emerging technology. The Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning ( HVAC ) system is considered one of the most critical and essential parts in buildings since...

Probabilistic energy management for building climate comfort in smart thermal grids with seasonal storage systems

This paper presents an energy management framework for building climate comfort (BCC) systems interconnected in a grid via aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) systems in the presence of two types of uncertainty (private and common). ATES can be used either as a heat source (hot well) or sink (cold well) depending on the season. We consider...

Urban mining and buildings: A review of possibilities and limitations

In recent years there has been growing interest in urban mining in buildings from various environmental and economic perspectives. Materials hidden in buildings are attractive alternatives to raw ones and building activities are responsible for a large share of urban waste in many societies. The paper presents an analysis of possibilities for...

How small can a dwelling be? A revision of Portugese building regulations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the minimum necessary net internal area of dwellings that should be established by Portuguese building regulations. Design/methodology/approach – The following tasks are carried out: selecting the furniture and equipment necessary for each dwelling; determining the size of furniture and equipment...

Dutch standard for condition assessment of buildings

Purpose – This paper aims to provide insight into the use of a standard for condition assessment. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a literature review, an analysis of the development, content and practical use of the Dutch Standard for Condition Assessment of Buildings, and the findings of several research projects about...