| 1. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Crossing dichotomies and breaking mental patterns: Green business development when all else fails?
- 2017
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Ingår i: 8th International Scientific Conference “Rural Development 2017: Bioeconomy Challenges”, 23–24 November, 2017 Kaunas, Lithuania.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Obtaining sustainable and inclusive societal organization is not merely a simple matter of ‘doing it’ by subscribing to some winning formula. Given that conceptual frameworks always guide our thoughts, judgments and actions (Latour, 2013; Harvey, 1996; Dennett, 1993), the ways in which we relate to concepts chosen to serve as guiding forces for future development will eventually determine its outcome. As scholarly evidence continuously suggests the concepts ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are increasingly recognized as artificial barriers for conducting sound and integrated development endeavors in a globalized reality of interconnectedness. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to eradicate poverty, shield the planet and safeguard prosperity for all, commitment to universal access to healthy food year round has become an important agenda point. This, however, has been exacerbated by binary thinking and separate ways of doing policy. This paper aims to share experiences from a unique project launched in the northern parts of Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city. While the area offers ample resources and immense opportunities for areal economies, it at the same time remains one of Gothenburg’s most segregated, with high levels of unemployment, ill health and crime. The uniqueness of the project lies not only in its way of abridging the rural-urban divide, but also by consciously deferring from the debilitating rhetoric of previous ‘immigrant policies’, and instead focusing on agricultural productivity, small-scale food producers and sustainable food strategies. Such exhortations to bridge between philosophical and material polarities, however, have not come without conceptual and practical challenges, something this paper aims to subsume and open up to debate.
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| 2. |
- Kurkinen, Eva-Lotta, et al.
(författare)
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Energy and climate-efficient construction systems : Environmental assessment of various frame options for buildings in Brf. Viva
- 2018
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the collaborative forum Positive footprint housing® Riksbyggen is building the Viva residential quarter, which is a sustainability project at the very forefront of what is possible with contemporary construction. The idea is that this residential quarter should be fully sustainable in ecological, economic and social terms. Since 2013, a number of pilot studies have been completed under the auspices of the Viva project framework thanks to financing from the Swedish Energy Agency. The various building frame alternatives that have been evaluated are precast concrete, cast in-situ concrete and solid wood, all proposed by leading commercial suppliers. The report includes a specific requirement for equivalent functions during the use phase of the building, B. An interpretation has been provided that investigates the building engineering aspects in detail, as well as an account of the results based on the social community requirements specified in Viva, durability, fire, noise and energy consumption in the Swedish National Board of Building, Planning and Housing building regulations (BBR), plus Riksbyggen’s own requirements, Sweden Green Building Council’s Environmental Building Gold (Miljöbyggnad Guld) and 100-year life cycle. Given that the alternatives have different long-term characteristics (and also that our knowledge of these characteristics itself varies), these functional requirements have been addressed by setting up different scenarios in accordance with the EPD standard EN 15978. Because Riksbyggen has specified a requirement for a 100-year life cycle, we have also opted for an analysis period of 100 years. The results show no significant differences between concrete and timber structures for the same functions during the life cycle, either for climate or for primary energy. The minor differences reported are accordingly less than the degree of uncertainty involved in the study. The available documentation on the composition of the relevant intumescent paint coating on solid wood frames differs from source to source, so it was not possible to fully allow for the significance of this. The LCA has not included functional changes in the building linked to load-bearing characteristics, noise, moisture, health or other problems that may result in increased maintenance and replacement. The concrete houses have been dimensioned for 100 years, for instance, in accordance with tried and tested standards and experience. The solid wood house is not dimensioned in the same way, and this has led to us having to assume various scenarios.The results also show the following:• The uncertainties involved in comparing different structures and alternative solutions are very significant. The results are affected by factors such as life cycle, the functional requirements taken into consideration, transportation, design and structural details, etc.• Variations in the built items and a considerable degree of uncertainty in the assumptions make it difficult to obtain significant results on comparisons. Only actual construction projects with known specific data, declared from a life cycle perspective that takes into account actual building developer requirements and involving different scenarios (best, documented and worst-case) for the user stage can currently be compared.• In the other hand, comparisons restricted to different concrete structures only, or to different timber structures only, ought to involve a lower degree of uncertainty. These would then provide results that are significant as well as improvement requirements that are relevant.• There is potential for improving concrete by imposing requirements on the material• There is potential for improving solid wood frames by developing and guaranteeing well-documented long-term characteristics for all functional requirements.The LCAs were performed as an iterative process where all parties were given the opportunity to submit their viewpoints and suggestions for changes during the course of the work. This helped ensure that all alternatives have been properly thought through.Because, during the project, Riksbyggen opted to procure a concrete frame, in the final stage the researchers involved focused on ensuring the procurement process would result in the concrete frame as built meeting the requirements set out above. As things currently stand, the material requirements for the concrete are limited by the production options open to the suppliers, and this is therefore being investigated in the manufacture of precast concrete frames for the Viva cooperative housing association.
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| 3. |
- Mangold, Mikael, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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Building ownership, renovation investments, and energy performance - A study of multi-family dwellings in Gothenburg
- 2018
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 10:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The European building stock was renewed at a rapid pace during the period 1950-1975. In many European countries, the building stock from this time needs to be renovated, and there are opportunities to introduce energy efficiency measures in the renovation process. Information availability and increasingly available analysis tools make it possible to assess the impact of policy and regulation. This article describes methods developed for analyzing investments in renovation and energy performance based on building ownership and inhabitant socio-economic information developed for Swedish authorities, to be used for the Swedish national renovations strategy in 2019. This was done by analyzing measured energy usage and renovation investments made during the last 30 years, coupled with building specific official information of buildings and resident area characteristics, for multi-family dwellings in Gothenburg (N = 6319). The statistical analyses show that more costly renovations lead to decreasing energy usage for heating, but buildings that have been renovated during the last decades have a higher energy usage when accounting for current heating system, ownership, and resident socio-economic background. It is appropriate to include an affordability aspect in larger renovation projects since economically disadvantaged groups are over-represented in buildings with poorer energy performance.
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| 4. |
- Roupé, Mattias, 1975, et al.
(författare)
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Immersive visualization of Building Information Models
- 2016
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Ingår i: Living Systems and Micro-Utopias: Towards Continuous Designing, Proceedings of the 21st International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA 2016). - 9789881902672 ; , s. 673-682
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The design process of a building often involves many different actors and people with different experiences, level of knowledge and ability to interpret information. The most common information media in these processes are 2D-drawings, documents and 3D images of design. These media can be difficult to interpret and understand and could cause communication difficulties and design errors. However, in this context, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Virtual Reality (VR) have been shown to offer an efficient communication platform. In this paper we present and evaluate a portable immersive visualization system that uses the BIMs directly from the design tools. The system is validated in a real construction project, where the dif-ferent disciplines in the design process used the system. The result was collected through interviews and observation during usage of the system. All the participants expressed that this type of visual interface helped them to get another level of understanding and perception of space, which lead to better decision-making process and resolving of design issues.
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| 5. |
- Estévez Mauriz, Laura, 1982
(författare)
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The urban form and the sound environment - Tools and approaches
- 2017
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cities are always confronted with transition and adaptation. Awareness on urban environmental quality is leading the vision about the built environment’s resilience and sustainability, highlighting the importance of a multidisciplinary framework for urbanisation processes. One of the main concerns is the negative impact of outdoor noise due to road traffic, whereby controlling the sound environment through good quality spatial production is a priority. Europe and other parts of the world are experiencing a chronic traffic congestion problem. The environmental impact of this situation is overwhelming, where 90 % of the health impact due to noise exposure is estimated to be caused by road traffic noise. In this regard, noise maps are seen as a powerful tool in the development of new urban areas, where its noise level underestimation can endanger the wellbeing of citizens. At this rapid urbanisation, divided pronouncements on decision-making are devastating. The aim is to overcome negative aspects derived from a late intervention by including urban sound planning as an opportunity to the user’s experience and wellbeing, avoiding poor patches in the urban configuration and economical burden. The present work is committed to the development of tools for controlling, communicating and designing the sound environment on a level beyond today’s solutions, capable to be included at the early stages of the planning process. First, the study goes through the importance of the quiet side and the implementation of an engineering method as a powerful tool in the urban development, obtaining accurate results compared to measurements. In an attempt to study time variations of traffic within cities and its relevance regarding noise emission (normally overlooked in current noise mapping calculations), a microscopic road traffic modelling tool is developed in the second study, giving useful output for noise level predictions as function of time. The time-pattern analysis opens the possibility to test traffic configurations and explore a large variety of results in the form of descriptors as statistical indicators, calm periods and noise events, and outcomes as difference maps and contribution maps. The third study extends toward the evaluation of the effects of spatial heterogeneity (considered a key strategy to increase the liveability of spaces) on the environmental performance and resilience capacity of the transportation system through the study of noise pollution and its economic impact. The studies presented are using real case scenarios as a test-bed not only for implementation, but mainly for the development of tools.
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| 6. |
- Shadram, Farshid, 1987-
(författare)
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Assessment and optimization of life cycle enrgy use in buildings
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Buildings account for 40% of all energy use in European countries. The European Union (EU) therefore encourages member states to adopt Energy Efficiency Measures (EEMs) and implement energy-efficient practices during building design to minimize the energy use of buildings. However, recent studies have shown that energy-efficient buildings may not always outperform conventional buildings in terms of Life Cycle Energy (LCE) use. This is mainly due to the trade-off between embodied and operational energy, and a reliance on EEMs that reduce operational energy while sometimes increasing embodied energy and LCE use. To improve buildings’ environmental performance, the impact of different EEMs on buildings’ energy use needs to be assessed from a lifecycle perspective, and methods for identifying optimal combinations of EEMs that minimize LCE use should be developed. Ideally, these methods should be integrated with building information modelling (BIM) to enable seamless data exchange and to help Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) practitioners make optimal design decisions relating to EEMs. The work presented in this thesis had two overall objectives: (1) to explore the scope for developing BIM-supported method(s) for assessing and optimizing the impact of EEMs on buildings’ LCE use during the design process, and (2) use the BIM-supported method(s) for exploring the impact of various EEMs that are implemented and modified during the building design process on the buildings’ LCE use.The work presented in this thesis is based on an exploratory research design involving iterative cycles of (1) problem identification, (2) method development, (3) method examination, and (4) theory suggestion. In step 1, problems were identified by conducting literature studies and workshops with AEC practitioners, and analyzing archival data. In step 2, prototyping was used to develop methods to overcome the identified problems. In step 3, the applicability of these methods (or prototypes) was tested in case studies on actual and hypothetical building projects. Three case studies were conducted – one dealing with a low energy dwelling located in Kiruna, Sweden; another dealing with a multifamily residential building in Uppsala, Sweden; and a third dealing with a hypothetical multifamily residential building in Stockholm, Sweden. In step 4, the results were compared to existing theories to strengthen existing knowledge and identify previously unrecognized findings.In relation to the first objective, the results obtained show that the factors and activities required to develop BIM-supported method(s) for assessing and optimizing the impact of EEMs on a building’s LCE use during the design phase are:• A database that stores external and building project data (e.g. BIM data) and links it to be used for assessment and optimization, providing access to the data whenever needed.• The development of interfaces using middleware applications to ensure interoperability and seamless automated exchange of information between BIM and other systems.• Predefined objects (i.e. building part and component recipes) that are stored in a database and linked to inventories and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for the relevant materials, enabling assessment of the buildings’ embodied energy and LCE use.• The application of multi-objective optimization techniques (e.g. Pareto-based genetic algorithms) to identify optimal solution(s) for EEMs that minimize (optimize) the building’s LCE use.In relation to the second objective of the thesis, the results obtained indicate that:• EEMs that are implemented and modified during the detailed design phase have much less influence on the building’s LCE use than those implemented in the early design phase. Highly influential EEMs related to the early design phase which were tested herein were the building’s shape, orientation, Window to Wall Ratio (WWR), and the selection of materials used in the building envelope.• Generally, thickening roof insulation has a strong beneficial effect on LCE use for buildings in Sweden.• For buildings using energy sources with high primary energy factors, the most effective way to reduce LCE use may be to implement many EEMs that reduce operational energy use. However, this approach may be less helpful for buildings using greener energy sources because in such cases the embodied energy may have a greater effect on the final LCE use.• The embodied energies of materials in the same class can vary significantly between suppliers. Such differences in embodied energy can be identified by considering the suppliers’ EPDs, the energetic contributions due to their mode of transportation from the site of production, and the distance between the site of production and the construction site.• If the developed optimization approach is used to identify optimal combinations of EEMs in the early design phase, designers can freely choose from a wide range of building shapes without greatly affecting LCE use. However, without early phase optimization, designs that use different building shapes may exhibit significantly different LCE use values.The results provide both theoretical and practical contributions that may be useful to researchers and AEC practitioners seeking to develop BIM-supported design processes and to reduce buildings’ LCE use by adopting appropriate EEMs. The results also show that embodied energy can be a major component of a building’s LCE use if the building’s design relies heavily on EEMs designed solely to reduce operational energy use. Policy makers and governmental bodies are thus advised to update regulations and building codes to reflect the importance of embodied energy so as to minimize the LCE use of new and retrofitting building projects.
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| 7. |
- Adam, Abderisak, 1988, et al.
(författare)
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Approaches to Safeguarding Sustainability Requirements in Public Construction Projects – the Client’s Perspective
- 2016
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Ingår i: CIB World Building Congress 2016.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In recent years, the concept of sustainability has penetrated much of modern political, social and industrial discourse. Its recent popularization, stemming from the Brundtland report of 1987, has led to sustainability becoming a household term in nearly every industry, of which the construction sector is no exception. Considering the importance that sustainability has in the construction industry, and how it is particularly emphasized in construction financed by public funds, questions need to be raised in terms how capable the construction client is in meeting and achieving the sustainability requirements, often set by politics, that exist whilst safeguarding project delivery. The study is based on four interviews targeting public clients in Sweden and it investigates how sustainability requirements are managed in large public construction projects. What is of particular interest is the degree to which public client organizations either develop or procure systems/staff to ensure that the criteria for social, environmental and cultural sustainability are maintained and that the consequences of different approaches are managed. The results support the idea of having a multifaceted approach to sustainable construction, arguing that terms such as social and cultural sustainability may instead be dealt with separately from the more strictly defined sustainability terms of toxicity, waste and energy consumption. There is also a suggestion that once the client organization begins incorporating a sustainability mind-set in all of its affairs, members of that organization may begin working with sustainability on a perfunctory basis without necessarily understanding the underlying reasons for their actions. Finally, the challenge with sustainability is perhaps not so much that there is a lack of capability as much as there is a lack of resources for working with sustainability.
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| 8. |
- Johansson, Pär, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Super insulation materials in the building sector: Field studies and future challenges
- 2018
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the 7th International Building Physics Conference, IBPC2018. ; , s. 131-136
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The global rate of improvement in energy efficiency have to be increased to reach the UN sustainable development goals by 2030. Super insulation materials (SIM) can maintain the same thermal transmittance with a thinner insulation layer compared to conventional insulation materials. Recommendations and experiences from practical applications are needed to raise the knowledge and awareness of using SIM in buildings. Evidences related to real-condition performance need to be presented and independently assessed. The aim of this paper is to describe the state-of-the-art in the area of SIM in building applications based on monitoring data related to long-term performance of vacuum insulation panels (VIP). Both VIP and advanced porous materials (APM) have been successfully installed over the past 15 years in buildings. This paper presents a case study where the temperature and relative humidity of a wall were monitored for seven years. The results of the monitoring indicate that the VIP fulfil its function with no sign of degradation. By continuous product development, the performance of the SIM are improved for every generation which gives a promising outlook for the wider implementation of SIM in the building envelope.
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| 9. |
- Nielsen, Stig Anton, 1981
(författare)
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Propositional architecture and the paradox of prediction
- 2015
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Ingår i: Archidoct Vol. 4. - 2309-0103. ; 4, s. 72-85
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What if we could predict trends, rising phenomena and future necessity in our build environment? If we could trace behaviors and forecast the needs for the future? If we had a tool for proposing architecture, that was able to point out potentialities and suggest additions, subtractions and modifications.If Architects had a tool to predict future demands, modification of the build environment could meet the changing behaviors and emerging phenomena in society. Research on existing building stock is reviewed in a context where prediction on complex indeterminate environments is possible. And an entirely new type of architectural tool is proposed, an algorithm for prediction.The algorithm, capable of making prediction in unstructured environments, is presented, and basis and idea of the algorithm is described in detail. The discussion focus on possible applications for this new tool, and the paradox of prediction is debated. Finally, improvements to the computational system are proposed.
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| 10. |
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