Mapping and Managing essential resource flows in airport regions - the case of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Metropolitan airports are focal points of large amounts of essential resource flows, such as energy, materials, water and food. These flows are predominantly linear, whilst externalising both the negative and positive impacts associated with them. Moreover, qualitative and quantitative understanding regarding the throughput of these flows is...

The Energy Master Plan: Transition to self-sufficient city regions by means of an approach to local energy potentials

City regions and metropolitan areas form the scale on which the battle for will be won or lost, and the level at which cities can become resilient and even self-sufficient. A master plan for a sustainable energy system for city regions is not a luxury anymore. An energy master plan will be based on incremental steps of transition. The approach...

A Comparative Study of Design Strategies for Energy Efficiency in 6 High-Rise Buildings in Two Different Climates

Due to the ever growing trend of urbanization and population growth, the construction of high-rise buildings is inevitable and will also continue at an ever increasing pace. However, typical high-rise buildings (the traditional template of a rectilinear, air-conditioned box) are not energy efficient in many aspects of their design. In this...

REAP2: New concepts for the exchange of heat in cities

Cities need to become independent from finite resources, among which fossil fuels. There is great potential to save energy is many cities, however the generation of power is insufficient due to the limited space as a result of urban densities. An energy source less commonly explored is reuse of waste heat from various urban functions. In that...

Cities ready for energy crisis: Building urban energy resilience

Various sources indicate that threats to modern cities lie in the availability of essential streams, among which energy. Most cities are strongly reliant on fossil fuels; not one case of a fully self-sufficient city is known. Engineering resilience is the rate at which a system returns to a single steady or cyclic state following a perturbation....

Continuing the building's material cycle: A literature review and analysis of current systems theories in comparison with the theory of cradle to cradle

Recently, the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) theory set ground in the Netherlands, propounding that environmental impact reduction can provide a positive economical impulse to stakeholders. The building industry has warmly received this approach and considers it to be a solution to the above-mentioned burden. However, if the building sector wants to...