Sustainable building Research Group


The research group Sustainable building works with concepts, tools and strategies to enhance the sustainability performance of construction materials, building products, buildings as well as entire cities. The research is related to ecological and economic life cycle assessment of construction materials, buildings and infrastructures, sustainability assessment tools for buildings, social-cultural and climate adapted design concepts as well as energy and material resource based building stock modeling and its visualization.

Latest News

DT4PEDs workshop about Quality Assurance Process was hosted by Chalmers
The Digital Twins for Positive Energy Districts (DT4PEDs) international team had its first in-person meeting in Gothenburg on the 5th and 6th of October. Organized by the Swedish team, the workshop’s main focus was the collaborative development of Quality Assurance requirements, pertinent to both the Positive Energy Districts (PED) and its accompanying Digital Twin.
Last updated on Oct 12, 2023 2 min read
DT4PEDs workshop about Quality Assurance Process was hosted by Chalmers
PhD Round table on public participation at the ENHANCE summit
Sanjay Somanath, PhD student at the Sustainable Buildings Research group participated in the parallel session on public participation in urban planning at the ENHANCE alliance summit hosted by Gdansk University of Technology.
Last updated on Oct 10, 2023 1 min read
Project
PhD Round table on public participation at the ENHANCE summit
Twinable - Interactive urban planning featured article on xyHt magazine
The twinable project was featured on xyHt magazine in an article titled “Interactive urban planning” by Marc M. Delgado. Marc interviewed members of the Twinable team, Alexander Hollberg, Liane Thuvander and Sanjay Somanath on the process of developing the interactive VR application within the Twinable project.
Last updated on Oct 2, 2023 1 min read
Project
Twinable - Interactive urban planning featured article on xyHt magazine
Life Cycle Talks - LCA For optimization in early design phases of buildings
Life Cycle Talks is a series of talks presenting the research front to keep you up to date with the science and application of the life cycle perspective. Life Cycle Talks are produced by the Innovation cluster for the life cycle perspective & Swedish Life Cycle Center.
Last updated on Oct 2, 2023 1 min read
Life Cycle Talks - LCA For optimization in early design phases of buildings
Workshop at CISBAT Conference - Low carbon building renovation – how and how much
Together with Pedram Mirabian and Yasmine Priore, Alina Galimshina has held a workshop with the title “Low carbon building renovation – how and how much?”. During the workshop, the topic of building renovation considering various aspects such as thermal insulation, heating systems and renewable energy was discussed.
Last updated on Oct 2, 2023 1 min read
Workshop at CISBAT Conference - Low carbon building renovation – how and how much
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Projects

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All Life Cycle Energy Computational Sustainable design Sustainable Building Digital Twins Digital Tools Courses
Last updated on Oct 23, 2023
Exploring the material stock - urban form nexus for urban sustainability

As the built environment continuously grows, so does the accumulation of materials in buildings and infrastructures. This has dramatic environmental impacts: resource extraction and waste generation are ever-increasing, and the transformation of resources into buildings and infrastructures stands for 11% of global carbon emissions.

Jun 8, 2023 Teaching
ACE285 - Integrated sustainable building design – engineers
ACE285 - Integrated sustainable building design – engineers

The aim of the course is to equip students with the necessary skills and abilities to carry out design for sustainable building, integrating environmental, functional, technical, and aesthetical qualities in a design concept. Furthermore, they shall be able to cooperate over professional boundaries in the design processes. They are also expected to be able to formulate and communicate their main ideas and goals orally and in written form.

Last updated on Nov 20, 2023 Projects
CREATE
CREATE

The Carbon Resource Energy and Adaption Toolbox Europe (CREATE), is a comprehensive modelling and data toolbox that can overcome problems such as - How, and at which costs can ambitious climate change mitigation goals be reached? How can urban planning be developed while simultaneously tackling climate change? How can the long-term economic and environmental performance of the building stock be optimized? How to plan electricity, gas, and thermal networks to suit future energy demand and the existing urban topology?

Last updated on Apr 11, 2022 Projects
Users’ impact on domestic energy consumption
Users’ impact on domestic energy consumption

The project aims to improve the understanding of the impact of users on domestic energy use by conducting a pilot study in the HSB Living Lab, and develop a methodology to study the impact of occupants’ physiological and behavioural responses on their home’s energy use.

Last updated on Sep 6, 2022 Projects
DecarbonAIte
DecarbonAIte

The DecarbonAIte project aims to extract data on building characteristics from public databases. Use this information to elaborate and reinforce urban digital twin models. Finally, through this platform, to propose optimal renovation measures. The system to be implemented targets various stakeholders, from building owners to policy makers.

Last updated on Jan 20, 2022 Projects
Holistic life cycle performance optimization
Holistic life cycle performance optimization

The main goal of the project is to mainstream holistic life cycle performance optimisation in early design stages of buildings to save energy and greenhouse gas emissions. All performance optimisation will follow a life cycle perspective.

Last updated on Sep 6, 2022 Projects
Urban modelling and planning tool for energy and invisible environmental factors using AI methods
Urban modelling and planning tool for energy and invisible environmental factors using AI methods

To plan, build or renovate cities, engineers and decision makers need tools and workflows that are compartmentalized and work ad-hoc without correlating different parameters. To tackle these problems and enable environmental assessment and policy analysis, this project aims to create an urban modeling planning tool for the energy demand of buildings and the invisible environmental factors of noise and wind. The project will . * provide a basis for scenario analysis of any urban area in Sweden. * use AI/ML to enrich existing models . * make the toolsets readily available, and. * enable improved visualization and communication or results.

Last updated on Sep 5, 2022 Projects
Architectural design variable assessment in multi-objective life cycle optimisation
Architectural design variable assessment in multi-objective life cycle optimisation

This project aims to identify the important architectural design variables in early design stage for life cycle optimisation by interacting with stakeholders who have major influence in early design stage.

Last updated on Jan 10, 2023 Teaching
Optimized early-stage life cycle assessment of buildings -Developing a tool enabling early-stage parametric life cycle assessment
Optimized early-stage life cycle assessment of buildings -Developing a tool enabling early-stage parametric life cycle assessment

Abstract In the early stages of a building project, there is low quantity and quality of data regarding building materials while the ability to influence the environmental impact is high. Easy ways of assessing environmental impact of materials in these stages can make a big difference and shift buildings’ contribution to global warming towards a more sustainable track.

Last updated on Jan 20, 2022 Projects
REDAP
REDAP

The aim of this project is to develop a Regional Energy Demand Analysis Portal (REDAP) together with the partner countries Austria, Ireland and Sweden based on local and regional Need-owners demands.

Last updated on Jan 20, 2022 Projects
WELL Neighbourhood
WELL Neighbourhood

This project is about developing digital tools to promote social sustainability in neighbourhood design

Last updated on Sep 6, 2022 Projects
SEsam
SEsam

SEsam : Sharing Economy sustainability assessment method to support the implementation of sharing economy initiatives at neighbourhood level. The aim of this project is to develop and apply a systemic method that quantifies the sustainability benefits of implementing different sharing economy initiatives in neighborhoods in cities.

Last updated on Jul 6, 2023 Teaching
BOM250 - Life cycle engineering
BOM250 - Life cycle engineering

The master course aims to provide in-depth knowledge on the concepts of Life Cycle Engineering and sustainable design in the built environment.

Last updated on Mar 16, 2022 Projects
Digitalisation of social sustainability in neighbourhood design
Digitalisation of social sustainability in neighbourhood design

Digital tools for performance-assessment are commonly used to shorten the feedback loop in testing designs for buildings and neighbourhoods. However, these tools do not extend to the social dimension in the same way as the economic and environmental dimensions. The aim of this project is to develop a theoretical understanding of social sustainability at the neighbourhood planning level and propose a model for the development of digital tools.

Code Video
Last updated on Jan 20, 2022 Teaching
Sample of completed thesis
Sample of completed thesis

This project is about developing digital tools to promote social sustainability in neighbourhood design

Code Video
Last updated on Jan 20, 2022 Teaching
Sample of Offered thesis
Sample of Offered thesis

This project is about developing digital tools to promote social sustainability in neighbourhood design

Code Video
Last updated on Jul 6, 2023 Teaching
ACE405 - Design and performance optimization in architecture
ACE405 - Design and performance optimization in architecture

The aim of the course is to deepen the skills in using simulation tools for the integrated performance optimisation of an architectural design project. Performance criteria can include energy demand, daylight, thermal comfort, embodied carbon, amongst others. The students can choose to optimise an own design of a building or urban project that they developed in a previous course, or they can use the case study provided by the teachers. The design optimisation process will be based on and driven by knowledge gained using the simulation tools.

Last updated on Apr 11, 2022 Projects
Energy performance and occupant satisfaction in green-certified office buildings
Energy performance and occupant satisfaction in green-certified office buildings

The project aims to reflect on green building design and operation and occupant satisfaction and experience in the “real world”; explore the potential causes from the detailed design parameters, necessary conditions in the building certification scheme and building operation and control.

Last updated on Apr 11, 2022 Projects
Occupant well-being and productivity in sustainable office buildings
Occupant well-being and productivity in sustainable office buildings

The project aims to develop advanced indoor environmental quality IEQ in sustainable office buildings promoting occupant comfort, health, and productivity by identifying key factors and revealing causal relations from evidence-based studies. A national dataset will be aggregated from the office buildings in Sweden by physical measurement and subjective survey.

Last updated on Mar 16, 2022 Projects
Powering the City
Powering the City

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) offers renewable energy to be generated on-site and prevents additional sealing of natural ground, potentially replacing traditional building elements. The objective of the Powering the City module is to develop a holistic, multi-scale and interdisciplinary approach for assessing large scale deployment of BIPV in urban contexts under different climatic, socio-economic and architectural / urban conditions. The team will use Zurich and Singapore as exemplary and complementary case studies.

Last updated on Mar 15, 2022 Projects
Sustainable Bridges
Sustainable Bridges

This project aims at the full utilization of the benefits offered by stainless steel to have sustainable and “maintenance-free” road bridges which have competitive investment costs to that of their traditional carbon steel counterparts. It is believed that by the use of bridge girders with corrugated webs and stainless steel reinforcement and optimization of the material usage and production costs, a considerable reduction in the investment costs of a stainless-steel solution is attainable.

Last updated on Mar 15, 2022 Projects
Twinable
Twinable

A multiscale design interaction and visualization approach using mixed realities

AI Architecture Building performance buildings Circularity Digital tools Digital Twin DigitalTools DTCC Energy EU Indoor environmental quality LCA Projects SustainableBuilding Teaching Teaching_Courses tools Urban design visualisation
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