Table of contents

Preface

The SBE19 Milan "Resilient Built Environment for Sustainable Mediterranean Countries" is an International Sustainable Built Environment Conference, organized by Politecnico di Milano in the framework of the Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) series of conferences.

Being within the SBE series, this event gathers the support of CIB – International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction, iiSBE – International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment, the United Nations Environment Programme, and FIDIC – International Federation of Consulting Engineers. The goal of this series of regional and international conferences is to disseminate innovative policies and developments in the field of sustainable urban environment to a broad international audience of specialists in policy, design, construction and operation of buildings and related infrastructure.

The SBE19 Milan proceedings deals with the main topics of the conference, covering important items to support Sustainable Built Environment for Mediterranean countries: Environmental issues relevant to the Mediterranean region and adopted policies, programs regulations and standards within the regional context; Resource efficiency at the building, district and urban level; Innovation in materials, products and systems; Environmentally efficient materials and products and sustainable use of materials; Methods, tools and certification; Renovation and performance upgrading of the built environment; Integration of renewable energy at building and small urban area scales; Issues related to zero and nearly-zero operating and lifecycle emission performance; Cost, financing and taxation for high performance, Economic and social externalities; Training and education to promote adoption of sustainable approaches; ICT for a Sustainable process management.

The editors:

Bruno Daniotti, Marco Imperadori, Sonia Lupica Spagnolo

Department of Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering (ABC)

Politecnico di Milano

List of Chief Executive Committee, Steering Committee, Organizing Committee and Scientific Committee are available in this PDF.

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the proceedings Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.

The paper aims to present a study carried out within the Regional Operational Program - European Regional Development Fund 2014/2020 financing project for the efficiency improvement of 106 public heritage, owned by the Sicily Region. 38 case studies of this stock have been selected, having different uses (museum, library, office, etc.), typology and construction period, shifting from XI to XX century buildings. The sample heterogeneity gives in fact a large-scale overview on the Mediterranean heritage, allowing to assess the efficacy of energy policies (at Regional level) and to suggest feasible retrofit solutions for historic public buildings. Weak and strength points of each case are highlighted as from both an energy audit (based on bills and simulated energy performance data) and an on-field survey in a comparison. The inclusion of stakeholders' interviews in the walk-through investigation has clarified the efficacy of building and plants management. Finally, as tangible results, it is suggested to consider retrofit low-impact interventions accordingly to the building microclimate, as well as objects and users' needs, as a win-win strategy.

The greater Athens area, Greece's capital, has a very low percentage of green spaces which also lack connectivity, resulting in an urban environment which is anything but resilient and sustainable. This deficiency is particularly evident in the city's centre, where building regulations allow for tall buildings with maximum lot coverage, leaving little room for green areas. The few green spaces which do exist in Athens are usually in poor condition and their potential role as a "building block" of the city is overlooked. To remedy this situation, the existing green spaces as well as their connectivity must be improved, making them more appealing and accessible. Considering however that their percentage is so small, one way to "create" more of them is to take advantage of the unbuilt and overlooked surfaces in the back of lots, otherwise known as exterior common areas, which are privately owned, belonging to all of the owners in any given building block. They have the potential to become havens of greenery and pockets of tranquillity, transforming the urban environment on many levels. One way to make these green spaces (existing parks) and potential green spaces (exterior common areas) more accessible and better connected is through the use of green corridors. Thus, this paper's objective is to present such a design proposal, creating a green corridor network within Athens' city centre, linking the various existing parks with a few exterior common areas.

Piraeus, the third largest city within Greece constitutes one of the most significant ports in the east Mediterranean region. Inhabited since 2,600 B.C. Piraeus evolved to serve as the seaport of Athens that hosted a powerful commercial and military fleet and fortified the city during classical antiquity. Remains of Piraeus past prominence is evident through the numerous archaeological findings found throughout the city. The commercial significance of Piraeus continued in modern history soon after the establishment of the Greek state. Various interventions that included the development of the Athens-Piraeus railway line in 1869, the development of the railway link between Piraeus and the Peloponnese and northern Greece, as well as the development of the Corinth Canal in 1893 contributed in increasing port-traffic and initiating industrial development. The rapid urbanisation and industrialisation process resulted in the city's environmental degradation. In recent years Piraeus has been subjected to further degradation through de-industrialisation and downsizing of the trade industry. Nature-based solutions (NBS) aim to integrate more nature, natural features and processes within cities, landscapes and seascapes while providing environmental, economic and social benefits and contributing to building resilience. The public authorities together with the stakeholders from the private sector and civil society co- design, create and manage green infrastructure for post-industrial regeneration. The study presented constitutes part of the "proGIreg" project funded by the European Commission programme "Horizon 2020". A detailed site analysis of the Municipality of Piraeus was undertaken under four thematic headings: Socio-cultural inclusiveness, Human health and wellbeing, Ecological and environmental restoration, Economic and labour market. The main findings of the spatial analysis are presented which lead to the identification of two sites for the use of NBS.

The increase in interest in urban cultivation of edible eco-products has been the principle of the creation of movements and various groups of initiatives with a focus on agriculture, public health and information. Their aim is to return to nature, address the nutritional economy, organic nutrition, social relationships, and acquire specialist knowledge. The claim for the creation of urban agriculture areas such as public gardens and more specifically in inactive camps is based on ecologically sustainable and socially equitable development, the use of available natural resources in a sustainable manner and the rehabilitation of the bioclimatic intervention site.

As a case study was selected, the inactive camp (area of 689.000 m2), where the self-managed venture of the group "Peri-urban Cultivators" was developed. The aim is, to acquire a triple role in the area: green vegetable garden, recreation area and leisure park, without disturbing the historicity. The proposal is based on the principle of simplicity, using native flora, recyclable and eco-friendly materials and the existing infrastructure. Particular gravity was given to preserve the existing balance of space, with the functions, which have developed over time.

The elements of originality of the present work are identified by the use of more methodological tools such as: recording and analysis of existing state of the site, processing of questionnaires distributed to the self-managing group of growers and lastly, the processing of results from the open consultation of the municipality with the society the future sustainable development of the site.

Questions were used with elements of landscape architecture design focusing on: approaching the view of the general ecological park design and expanding and shaping the vegetable gardens with social and sustainable criteria. The results of the survey were elaborated using the statistical program S.P.S.S. highlighting the bases for a balanced proposal to redevelop an inactive camp. The research has highlighted the mistakes of the past in many areas and has mobilized the world with the aim of surviving or improving its life, in terms of quality and not just quantity. It also highlighted the sensitivity of the world to the environment and its preference for the use of eco-products.

Construction and demolition (C&D) waste is one of the heaviest and most voluminous waste streams generated nowadays in the world. Improper management of C&D waste often results in considerable environmental impacts. This study investigates the potential environmental impacts related to the end-of-life stage of buildings, focusing on how the use of different demolition techniques can influence the performances of the entire system of waste management. The main aim is to investigate if and how the environmental impacts associated to the selective demolition, that may be even higher than the ones associated to traditional techniques, are compensated by the benefits deriving from the waste recovery, reuse and recycling, that selective demolition is expected to maximize. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology is used to analyse and compare different scenarios: a selective demolition scenario for a residential building is compared with a traditional demolition one. Primary site-specific data supplied by demolition companies has been used. Indeed, unexpectedly, the selective demolition scenario results worse than the traditional one. Actions to improve the selective demolition have thus been identified.

This work sets out the test of the GRAL model (Graz Lagrangian Model, vs.18.1) in the urban area of Modena (Po valley, Northern Italy). The simulation domain sizes 2 000 x 3 000 m² and it features 'microscale' cells of 4 x 4 m². The simulation focuses on an intersection featured by large traffic flows next to a school and a regulatory air quality monitoring station classified as an urban traffic site. The model is a lagrangian particle dispersion model and it takes into account the presence of buildings as obstacles and generating microscale wind fields accordingly, making this class of model suitable for investigating spatial pattern of atmospheric pollution in urban areas where local accumulation might occur. The simulation investigates traffic emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) over the period October 29 to November 10, 2016, when direct measurements of traffic flow were collected by four one-channel doppler radar traffic counters. These counters provided continuous estimate of vehicle length, speed and number. These latter data were combined with available traffic flows at rush hour by PTV VISUM mobility software and the fleet composition of the municipality to estimate the total NOx emissions by vehicular traffic over the roads included in the simulation domain. NO_x simulated concentrations showed a moderate correlation with the NO_x observations at the nearby monitoring site. To have a better insight on the potential and the limitations of the GRAL model, its results will be compared with the output of the lagrangian particle dispersion model PMSS over the same area.

The principal aim of the INSIDE project (INdividual air pollution exposure, extracellular vescicles SIgnaling and hypertensive disorder DEvelopment in pregnancy) is to assess the molecular effects of environmental exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) of susceptible subject. Different approaches are considered to evaluate these effects, including an exposure-effect study performed on a selected population. The short-term exposure to different pollutants (PM and NO₂) was evaluated considering 51 subjects recruited from October 2017 to April 2018. Each subject was asked to carry personal instruments for few hours before a clinical evaluation (blood and cardiological examination) from home to hospital. Instruments used in the study were: (I) CairClip – CairPol (NO₂) and (II) Aerocet 831 - Aerosol Mass Monitor, Met One Instruments (size-fractionated PM). Moreover, a (III) smartphone with a GPS application and a (IV) Time Activity Diary (TAD) were used in this study to acquire information about the microenvironments (MEs) visited by subjects during the monitoring sessions.

The experimental design of the project allowed to further investigate issues related to the mode of exposure: through the analysis of TADs and GPS data, it was possible to document the time spent by each subject in the different MEs and characterize the average exposure and inhaled dose associated to different MEs.

The microenvironmental inhaled dose of pollutants was estimated considering the average exposure to PM and NO₂, the time spent across these MEs and the specific ventilation rate of each subject. Moreover, to understand which of these parameters has the major impact of the dose model, a sensitivity analysis was performed, on the total and on the MEs dataset.

According to the Köppen-Geiger climate classification, Europe is under the influence of at least ten different climate types. Thus, various climates can be found, from the polar tundra and cold climate in the Alps and northern European regions, to hot-arid climate in southern parts of Spain. This level of climate diversity makes the European territory interesting for the analysis from the bioclimatic building design perspective. Therefore, the purpose of the research was to assess the bioclimatic potential of selected European locations. The calculation of bioclimatic potential was done by acquiring the typical meteorological year (TMY) data comprised of climate characteristics, such as air temperature, air relative humidity and received solar irradiance, which was later processed by BcChart tool. In order to make bioclimatic potential maps of Europe, the points with uniform point sampling were generated. Furthermore, several additional locations of great interest were selected based on population density. The bioclimatic potential was used to define the prevailing passive building design strategies and measures at the analysed locations. At the same time, the in-depth analysis was conducted using the geospatial data and GIS tools, where the bioclimatic potential results at the selected locations were additionally analysed in relation to Köppen-Geiger climate types. The resulting bioclimatic potential maps can be used as a relevant onset for the policy makers in order to improve regional development strategies for building design.

Built environment energy efficiency improvement at the urban scale plays a key role to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts. However, the design and implementation of sustainable development scenarios is a complex process involving a large number of decision criteria and actors. An on-going Interreg project, "CesbaMED", emphasizes to employ a common sustainability assessment framework at the urban scale, which is a set of eight regional assessment tools, named CESBA MED SNTool. This tool is an innovative decision-making process, which supports the development of energy efficiency plans for building stock in the context of their surrounding neighbourhoods. Moreover, this tool produces the MED Passport, which compares the sustainability performances of buildings and neighbourhoods. This study aims at presenting the on-going research activities with a specific focus on the selection of the set of relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) among the indicators of CesbaMED project for the case study of the city of Turin (Italy), based on stakeholders' preferences. A workshop was organized to select the criteria and to assign the stakeholders' preferences using the "Delphi" survey method. This method is used in order to investigate the stakeholders' perspectives on the impact of each indicator on the different future sustainable scenarios. The results show that the stakeholders decided to remove and modify some KPIs for the specific case study of Turin with respect to its particularities.

The rapid de-industrialization of Western economies has left an enormous impact on the urban landscape in Europe, leaving behind vacant warehouses and production facilities. Industrial sites reuse is a crucial issue for sustainable land and urban development. This work is concerned with the fundamental aspects of industrial heritage and the ways to incorporate brownfields back into the urban fabric as a value-adding element. Adaptive reuse represents the most sustainable form of reuse, as it is based on maximal conservation of built assets, minimizing time, materials, embodied energy waste, and preserving site identity. For industrial areas redevelopment and reuse often site remediation is required. This activity is usually designed, carried out and assessed before and independently from urban design, planning and real estate strategies. This independence leads to higher remediation costs and often implies demolition of built industrial infrastructures, preventing any potential adaptive reuse. The former industrial site of Acciaierie Lucchini in Settimo Torinese, just outside of Turin, offered the chance to test a holistic approach, based on the multidisciplinary integration of knowledge and skills during the whole design process in order to define real policy proposals trying to improve the technical framework for more sustainable reuse procedures. In the 93.000 m² area, abandoned and left to degenerate since 2000, trading in ferrous materials and then steel manufacturing were carried out for over fifty years, leaving a legacy in the form of heavy metal contaminated backfill material and underneath soil. Isolation from the city centre, poor accessibility for pedestrians and the location within an industrial zone make this site inadequate for any form of residential development. Whereas re-industrialization of this brownfield can bring new value to the site, transforming the abandoned spaces into an innovative industrial hub able to combine logistic, production, leisure and temporary living, experimenting with mixed-use programs the new relation between innovative production and the city.

Former industrial facilities in our cities are finding new life as they are repurposed for use as nonindustrial commercial or even residential spaces. Often, these buildings are brownfield properties, complicating redevelopment because of past industrial uses that led to soil and/or water contamination at the site. In case site contaminants include volatile chemicals (VCs), concerns about air quality at the site may arise. VCs can vaporize from the subsurface and migrate through soil to outdoor air or into indoor spaces of overlying buildings, where they may accumulate.

Vapour intrusion is a relevant problem especially at sites where building modernization and revitalization is to be carried out, as environmental investigations may be complicated by the structure of the built environment, and the contamination may remain undetected. Moreover, upgrading structures to meet building codes and energy conservation requirements can create tight buildings that may enhance the effects of vapor intrusion.

For accurately predicting whether indoor air quality is being or will be adversely affected by subsurface contaminations a multiple lines of evidence approach should be used. Many issues can in fact introduce uncertainty in predicting indoor air concentrations related to vapor intrusion, including i) sampling and analytical methods ii) modelling of fate & transport from subsurface into building, iii) indoor/ambient background sources.

This work refers about the risk management strategy at a site in Milan (Italy) where soil remediation (excavation and off-site disposal) left a residual volume of soil polluted with petroleum-derived hydrocarbons next to redeveloped buildings. Furthermore, the site was also affected by an extended plume of chlorinated solvents in groundwater from an unknown source, likely external to the site. Indoor air, outdoor air, crawl-space air and soil gas samplings were carried out to collect robust information for evaluating decisions points in the vapor intrusion process. Despite few ambient air and crawl-space measurements resulted in episodic high values, as a general trend, the average outdoor and indoor concentrations did not differ significantly from the background values, suggesting other sources than soil pollution were affecting the quality of the air at the site. Although not strictly necessary in terms of time-averaged health risk, a mitigation system of the residual soil contamination was, however, installed to prevent future uncontrolled exposure.

Atmospheric dispersion models are a useful tools to assess air quality and emission source contributions in urban areas. Eulerian chemical and transport models (CTMs) can assess the regional background, that is the baseline level in the region of the city, and the urban background, that is the increment of concentration due to the emissions of the city, but they are not able to properly assess the very local contribution of emission sources at pollution hotspots within the city, because of their relatively large grid step. For the assessment of local sources' contribution, Lagrangian dispersion models can be profitably used, especially when high spatial resolution modelling is required. Actually, Lagrangian models rely on a more realistic spatialization of urban emissions, unevenly distributed because of the road network layout (for traffic emissions) and of the built environment structure (for space heating emissions); additionally, Lagrangian models also account for wind field modifications induced by buildings. In this work, air quality modelling results for fine particles (PM2.5) in the city centre of Milan obtained by means of the AUSTAL2000 Lagrangian model are compared with those of CAMx Eulerian model. Model simulations where performed for a 1.7x1.7 km² area in Milan and focused on three receptor points selected in order to represent sites with both different features in terms of the surrounding built environment and different exposure to the local emission sources. Namely, the receptors correspond to a green area, to a residential and shopping area near Milan main square, and to a congested crossroad on the inner ring road of the city centre. Comparison results show that the outcome of the Eulerian model at the local scale is only representative of a background level, similar to Lagrangian model's outcome for the green area receptor, but fails to reproduce concentration gradients and hot-spots, driven by local sources' emissions.

Transportation has significant and long lasting economic, social and environmental impacts, making it one of the main challenges to be addressed by policy makers, public managers and scholars worldwide. For Universities, students and staff transportation represents one of the largest impacts on the environment and society, since in many cases it represent a noticeable share of urban traffic. A wide literature is available on the policies that support reducing car usage and improve the environmental and social sustainability of commuting to University. This paper presents the situation in the Politecnico di Milano, recorded through mobility surveys carried out in 2015 and 2017 to investigate the key issues and design possible solutions. The aim of this study is to share the set of actions and activities planned to improve the current mobility patterns of the Politecnico di Milano in favour of more sustainable means of transport. The main strategies will be the redesign of the campuses and the new infrastructure to be installed, together with the promotion of sustainable behaviours among the whole University population thanks to various activities in the framework of the 'Città Studi Campus Sostenibile' initiative. A special mention will be given to the 'Vivi.Polimi' project, which aims to improve the liveability of the Politecnico spaces, and which will give sustainable mobility a new impulse. Indeed, the planned measures include the reduction of the parking spaces inside the historical main campus while providing new infrastructure targeted at the promotion of alternative means of transport, like increasing the number of bike shelters to encourage active mobility or installing new charging stations for electric cars.

The research lines that are outlined for the next few years identify the most promising innovation territory for the development of resilient envelopes in materials and construction systems. In the last two decades, this research lines has fuelled the development and then the entry on the market of different materials supported by a growing demand for resilience and characterized by the adoption of different approaches: from the design of the same material to the modification of some of its characteristics, obtained by technological transfer both within the same building sector, both from other sectors already tested, from the "eco-active" ones to obtain self-cleaning surfaces, up to PCM Phase Change Material, TIM Transparent Insulation Material, Aerogel, ETFE Ethylene, a polymer made of a translucent and resilient plastic film an air cushion that inflates and deflates according to weather conditions. To this, adds the strong contribution of SMART systems that produce sensitive and responsive envelopes that define its new resilient character. Another approach inherent in the adaptive requisite of buildings is that following the dictates of Biomimetic, it directs studies towards the realization of iridescent facades in the material-functional and language responses, to the different solicitations deriving from the contexts.

Assuming nature as a model, measurement we study materials and components that react to environmental stimuli in an organic and passive way. These highly adaptive strategies could substantially contribute to the realization of resilient envelopes. The use of innovative materials and systems would therefore in a certain sense "tune" the building to the climate, in fact with the right sensors and controls the building is able to respond to weather conditions in real time.

Social housing needs and constructive demands required new constructive solutions based on the use of innovative materials, aiming energy efficiency, reducing waste, maintains of buildings and pollutants such as CO₂. The composites materials with a ceramic matrix and fibres as reinforcement originate materials widely used in building industry. However, the study of the thermal performance of these composites materials as a ceiling prototype panels contributes to the determination of the internal temperatures and thermal comfort achieve by the social house. The present research had the purpose of conceiving and evaluating the thermal performance of a low-cost ceiling prototype panels made of a gypsum composite reinforced with sisal nonwoven ("in nature"), located in Salvador, Napoli, Barcelona and Marseille, by means of computer simulations for testing the improvements of the original gypsum ceiling. Among the composites used in this study are the following conformations: gypsum-sisal-gypsum (GMG), gypsum-sisal-sisal-gypsum (GMMG), gypsum-sisal-gypsum-sisal-gypsum (GMGMG). From obtained results, general guidelines were drawn for improving indoor comfort condition for summer at each location.

Rebar corrosion, carbonation or chloride induced, is the most important cause of premature failure of reinforced concrete structures. Prevention of rebars corrosion is of paramount importance to reduce cost, increase reliability and improve sustainability of constructions. This goal can be achieved in design and construction stages by proper concrete mix (w/c ratio and cement type), suitable casting and curing procedures, sufficient concrete cover as a function of environment aggressiveness, according to standards as Eurocode and EN 206. Additional protection methods can be used in very aggressive environment or when very long service life is required. Among these methods, corrosion resistant reinforcements (galvanised or stainless steels), concrete coatings, corrosion inhibitors and cathodic prevention have been proposed in literature and applied in field. In the first part of the paper the most recent achievements of our research group on rebars corrosion prevention are examined. In the second part the evaluation of the initiation time of corrosion of a structure in severe environment exposed to chlorides is carried out by Monte Carlo simulation: the results show that cathodic prevention and stainless steels reinforcements are the most effective methods to guarantee a safe working condition of a reinforced concrete structure in a severe environment.

In Mediterranean countries seawater might become a resource for the concrete production for sustainable construction industry. Nowadays its use, since it might induce the corrosion on ordinary carbon steel bars, is prohibited for the realization of reinforced concrete structures. Within the SeaCon Project, the use of seawater as mixing water has been studied in combination with corrosion-resistant reinforcement. This paper, firstly, discusses the influence of chlorides present in the seawater on the concrete properties related to the durability. Afterwards, the corrosion resistance of austenitic (304L and XM-28) and duplex (23-04 and 22-05) stainless steels reinforcing bars, and for comparison of carbon steel, embedded in alkaline and carbonated concretes made with seawater and subjected to different environmental conditions is evaluated. Results showed that seawater accelerated the early strength of concrete, whilst the carbonation penetration, the capillary suction and water absorption were slightly affected. Corrosion tests showed that corrosion did not initiate on 304L, 23-04 and 22-05 stainless steel bars, despite the presence of chlorides since the beginning even in the most aggressive exposure conditions and when concrete was carbonated; XM-28 reinforcement showed a slight change in corrosion behaviour in carbonated concrete exposed to the harshest conditions.

Raw earth is a traditional material used worldwide in vernacular architectures. For its wide availability, recyclability and low embodied energy in its life cycle, earth is acknowledged as one of the most environmentally sustainable material. Earth construction diffusion has been slowed by the lack of broadly accepted standards. Due to it, earth has been used as an artisanal material or adapted to existing technologies in combination with high embodied energy materials as steel, concrete and EPS or PU insulations (as in rammed earth technique, from now on RE). Aim of the research is to propose an innovative RE constructive technology, more coherent with the sustainable features of the base material, which can reach the high performances and the quality target required by the constructions sector using a low-tech prefabrication process. Prefabrication of RE elements can also reduce the construction times and the risks of technological faults, enhancing the quality of the entire building. The basic idea is to create manageable and transportable rammed earth panels with superior mechanical and thermal performances. The prefabrication under controlled conditions ensures a high-quality product which can be combined, on site, with a reinforcing timber structure with anti-seismic function. A characterization campaign on different local soils has been performed in order to implement the desired RE elements. The soils have been analysed with a set of geotechnical tests and qualitative assessments in order to detect their suitability for constructions. Once a suitable soil has been identified, a physical and / or chemical stabilization is needed to improve the physical features, mechanical characteristics and thermal properties of the natural soil. In the last section of the paper, the first results on natural local soil and engineered soil (an optimized mix of soil, sand and gravel) are presented and compared to identify a suitable material for the RE panel.

Earthen dwellings are part of the vernacular architecture and cultural heritage of many countries in the Mediterranean region, and a renovated interest towards these types of structures is now widespread in the same countries mainly due to sustainability reasons. However, poor resistance to weathering compromises their durability and their popular acceptance. A fascinating option to improve the resistance of earthen structures while preserving their environmental sustainability is to use locally available waste materials as stabilisers. In this paper, the evolution over time of the mechanical resistance of rammed earth stabilised with residues from widespread industrial processes (i.e. fly ash from coal combustion and calcium carbide residue from acetylene production) was investigated. Waste-stabilisation prompted optimal long-term mechanical resistance; on the other hand, laboratory samples exhibited low compressive strengths in the short-term when cured under standard conditions. The addition of a supplementary industrial residue (i.e. gypsum from flue gas desulfurization) was explored to enhance the early-age strength. Results confirmed the short-term strength benefits induced by gypsum addition.

Recent studies have demonstrated that the use of natural materials represents one of the pathways to achieve energy efficiency and environmental sustainability in buildings. In the framework of Circular Economy policies aimed at reducing the consumption of raw materials, shives, as an agricultural by-product of hemp cultivation, have gained a renovated life in the construction sector. Among all the building products made of hemp, hempcrete blocks are the most innovative, because they represent the solution to the needs of new and traditional buildings, offering a high energy saving, combined with the sustainability of materials and products, while remaining, in terms of shape and size, very close to the culture and the construction systems best known by professionals. In order to assess the potential benefits of hempcrete in the construction sector, its environmental performances were evaluated using the LCA methodology, following the international standard ISO 14044:2006+A1:2018 and in compliance with the European standard EN 15804:2012+A1:2013. To this purpose, four non-loadbearing walls were compared in the "cradle-to-gate" scenario, one made with hempcrete blocks and the others with more "traditional" materials. This research aims to be a basis for the development of future guidelines at national and international level in order to guarantee the maximum diffusion of this type of product also in the Mediterranean area. For this reason, it is important to identify the performance characteristics essential for hempcrete products studying their behavior not only as defined in the UNI EN ISO 12571, 2013 standard, but also in the Mediterranean climate. To achieve these objectives, some tests have been carried out to verify the thermo-hygrometric behavior. A 1 m2 of hempcrete wall was submitted to tests in a climatic chamber which simulated the environmental conditions typical of the south of Italy, in terms of temperature and moisture, in order to evaluate thermo-hygrometric behavior of hempcrete. Sensors and thermo-flowmeters for parameter analysis were applied on the wall. On the same material was carried out hygroscopic sorption tests as defined in the UNI_EN_ISO12571,2013 standard. The behavior detected by the experimental measurements on the masonry was compared with the simulated numerical behavior using WUFI software.

In the Genova hinterland, a traditional rural dwelling has been completely restored with the addition of new buildings respecting the landscape and the relationship with the existing vernacular construction. The project, in compliance with all the bio-architecture criteria of intervention associates traditional natural materials such as stone and lime with cutting-edge materials and techniques such as raw earth and hempcrete.

Both the recovery and the new buildings have been the subject of meticulous bio-design in terms of material choices and diversification of construction techniques according to the area of intervention and of the local material culture. The original stone walls have been preserved and consolidated with fibre-reinforced lime mortar applied directly on the stone wall after removing the old mortar. Timber beams and wooden floors have been almost completely renovated, but preserving and consolidating wherever possible the original structures. External walls have been re-plastered with thermo-plaster based on lime and diatomite. On the interior, a hemp lime mortar has been used.

Environmental sustainability of the whole retrofitting has been assessed by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology in compliance with the international ISO standards 14040 and 14044. The scenario is from cradle to construction, i.e. A1-A5 in terms of European directive EN 15804. The study is fully compliant with this directive in terms of impact indicators and additional benefits.

A significant percentage of the building stock in Europe was built before 1950, hence the restoration, retrofitting and renovation of historical buildings is of paramount importance not only for society, but also for the overall sustainability of the construction sector, which is known to have a huge environmental impact. In particular, the application of new paints and renders is extremely common in the restoration interventions carried out in historical buildings. In the selection of these materials, it is important to consider that they must comply with compatibility requirements, in terms of low stiffness and high water vapour permeability, not to give rise to premature defects and detachment. However, their environmental impact is basically never evaluated.

In this study, a preliminary evaluation of the environmental impact of some selected renders and paints for the restoration of historical buildings by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis was carried out. This analysis was performed using the information that are supplied by the manufacturers of the materials (as reported in the technical data sheets), so from the point of view of the designers, who must select among a range of commercial alternatives. Both ready-mix dry renders and mortars purposely prepared in the building site, with or without paint, mechanically or manually applied, were analysed.

The paint, notwithstanding its low amount with respect to the render, seems to have a very high impact. The results also suggest that an evaluation of these materials by LCA is definitely not easy, mostly because some key characteristics of materials which are needed for this analysis are currently not reported at all in the technical datasheet, thus jeopardizing a proper evaluation of their environmental impact.

The building sector is affected by a significant confusion between the concepts of sustainability and energetic efficiency: indeed, both the paradigms have the aim of safeguarding the planet, but the strategies to enact them certainly follow two different paths, often in contrast between them. The design of building envelopes has definite performance requirements, according to the current framework, but in any case the technological choices to fulfil them are not univocally determined. As an example, the objective of obtaining building envelopes with low transmittance can be reached by a huge number of typologies of solutions and materials, but of course the possible evaluations in terms of sustainability may in some cases show results that overturn the energetic assessment.

Also, considering the strict relation that exists between durability (also in terms of resilience) and sustainability, it can be concluded that the most correct tendency for materials and products can be – more in general – defined as environmental efficiency, the so-called eco-compatibility. Taking moves from the scientific literature on products and materials, both from the point of view of sustainability, and from that of durability and resilience, this work proposes a number of comparative evaluations that analyse the main systems and components of the external envelopes: built-up roofs and roof systems, opaque and transparent walls, ground floor slabs, doors and windows.

LCA analyses, durability assessments and considerations on resilience carried out on the abovementioned systems and components provide very interesting results to guide designers towards more conscious choices, aimed to integrate the different (and sometimes contradictory) aspects that allow to realize energetically and environmentally efficient buildings.

One of the most innovative applications for a circular economy approach is the recovery of cellulose fibres from municipal wastewater. Recovered cellulose fibres from the wastewater could bring benefits to the construction industry in terms of reducing the amount of non-renewable raw materials and increasing sustainability. Rotating belt filter was used to obtain cellulose fibre-rich sludge from real urban influent. Recovered cellulosic material reached values up to 26.59 g m^-3 when the solids removal efficiency was higher than 70%. Treated cellulosic sludge had an average of 87% content of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The recovered cellulose fibres were analysed and used in mortar mix to understand their possible impact in the building sector and the effect on the properties of hydraulic lime-based mortars. Properties of fibre addition were investigated in terms of microstructure and mechanical strength. Cellulose fibres were added by mix volume up to 20%. The overall results with the maximum content of cellulose fibres indicated the improvement of mortars performance in terms of increased lightness, flexural strength and hygrometric properties.

Climate change, heat waves and weather extremes unveil the need to counteract excess heat and its dramatic consequences on energy, economy, outdoor liveability and, above all, health. In the urban context, further concern arises from the concerted action of cities' materials, fabric, layout, density and activities, which are responsible of heat and pollutants entrapment, of wind force breaking and sweltering microclimates. Ready-to-use, high-impact, smart, cost and energy-effective countermeasures are the only ones having chances to be widely implemented in the short haul. Against this backdrop, this work presents the results obtained from an experimental campaign conducted on a single mitigation technology, meant to reach high local temperature reductions and empowered with climate-adaptive features to be applicable close to any vulnerable target (e.g. schools, hospitals, hospices ...): a web of smartly controlled mist sprayers. A prototype was designed and its impacts on the local microclimate were thoroughly characterized. Notably, the nozzle density was investigated to delineate the tradeoffs between evaporative cooling global magnitude and spatial dilution: in fact, by rarefying water emission, a larger air volume can partake to the cooling as it gets harder to reach saturation; conversely the point spatial temperature drop might weaken and become negligible, jeopardizing the whole mitigation strategy. This paper discloses such a controversial point and provides guidelines for the correct design of mist cooling systems for Urban Heat Island counteraction.

This paper focuses on novel interdisciplinary design methodologies between architecture and aerospace engineering in support of drastic required changes for the construction of genuinely resilient and sustainable buildings. Current design and construction methods are rarely truly interdisciplinary; driven by successive development stages as opposed to holistic system views capable of integrating valuable feedback loops into the design process and whole life cycle stages of a building. We address these deficiencies by integrating two methods that have been successfully tested independently. Firstly, the "Virtual Design Studio" (VDS) approach that focuses on holistic architectural design processes, initially funded by the US Department of Energy at Syracuse University and the New York State Center of Excellence for Energy and Environmental Systems. Secondly, the Value Assessment (VA) methodology supported by Visual Analytics in aerospace engineering design cycles, initially funded by the European Commission FP7 through the TOICA project and currently funded by Innovate UK through the APROCONE project, and developed by the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge.

Resilience can be interpreted as the capacity to overcome sudden negative events, including those caused by environmental impacts, by minimizing their effects. Through the application of circular economy, built environment can be more resilient, decoupling the human well-being by resources consumption and waste generation. Within a circular approach, buildings are considered "material banks" and materials reuse/recycling is promoted. In this context, it is important to verify the life cycle sustainability of the new circular practices, linking the economic and environmental sustainability with circularity. In fact, resource efficiency and waste management in term of reduction of material flows, don't represent certainly sustainable solutions. In this paper, LCA and LCC methodologies, which are scientific methodologies used to quantitatively assess the environmental and economic impacts, are investigated. Through a literature review, the paper analyses the state of the art regarding the application of Life Cycle tools for evaluating circular strategies, at the building level and at material level; then the use of Life Cycle tools for decision-making in the circular design process is investigated. Through the scientific literature review, the methodological assumption to assess the sustainability in decision-making is shown. Finally, the limitation of the methodology is highlighted and the improvement necessary to promote the use of Life Cycle tools in decision-making is discussed.

This paper presents the findings of a research study conducted with the aim of assessing the effectiveness and completeness of the environmental sustainability indicators at national and international level. The need is to clarify the various constantly evolving regulations for sustainability in the construction sector and to have a unique list of indicators mixing the several existing approaches. Starting from the main regulations on sustainability of construction works, the research outlines the required environmental indicators. Since the construction sector is considered one of the most impacting from an environmental point of view, a great attention is given to the creation of a user friendly tool to collect and store different sustainability indicators to support design choices and to increase the awareness of construction and manufacturing companies and end users. Nowadays manufacturers use EPD (Environmental product declaration), which is regulated by the European Standard EN 15804: 2014 and at the same time by the International ISO 21930: 2017, as an environmental certification and communication tool by which they can declare the environmental performance of their products through the use of specific indicators. After analysing the actual European and International regulations about the sustainability of construction works, the draft of the European standard has been examined in order to compare the used indicators and create an integrated and complete version of product data template in order to collect all of these parameters. Furthermore, the Ministerial Decree of April 10, 2013 has introduced the so called CAM (Italian acronyms for Minimum Environmental Criteria) - made mandatory by Legislative Decree 20/2016 Procurement Code, amended by Legislative Decree 56/2017 - in order to give the general criteria and technical indications required by tin Italy to help the public administration to identify and choose among several works and products those with a lower environmental impact. The paper shows an integrated BIM-based template to be adopted for product datasheets that can be exploited by manufactures, designers, facility managers and consumers in order to ease the information exchange about environmental impacts.

The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EU) 2018/844 has huge potential for efficiency gains in the EU building sector, including measures that should accelerate the rate of building renovation towards more energy efficient systems. Under the 2010 EPBD, all EU countries have established independent energy performance certification systems supported by independent mechanisms of control and verification. However, current practices and tools of energy performance assessment and certification applied across Europe face several challenges. The paper presents an overview on researches and tools for the European building stock renovation process with the goal to highlight barriers, limits and benefits to increase the energy renovation rate. The main focus is to clarify the energy performance assessment and process for the certification and the introduction of the Building Renovation Passport, considering the novelty introduced by latest regulations and standards.

Maintenance is crucial in hospitals, where potential systems failures can have a significant impact on patients. An hospital is a complex asset because of the co-existence of multiple areas and interaction among health-related and non-health-related activities. The central hypothesis is that the appropriate maintenance procedure depends on served spaces and plants. Therefore, the research aims at establishing a correlation between the operational criticalities of each area and critical elements of plants to improve and optimize the execution of maintenance activities. The analysis is based on three steps. Firstly, the identification of criteria aimed at defining the plants criticality in correlation with the ways in which spaces are served and, moreover, definition of criteria for spaces classification based on performed activities. Last step is the description of components through two categories of factors. The first refers to analysis of design and functioning aspects of plants; the second is related to components functioning and deterioration. This correlation among "criticality index" and "health index" for all components provides indications on modalities and priorities for extraordinary interventions. Relative weights were attributed through the consultation with hospital technical office. The proposed maintenance management was applied in a hospital made up of 65000 squared-meters to include it in the informatic system that is currently used for repairs. This new maintenance management has the purpose of providing indications for maintenance strategies by considering contemporary nature of functional spaces, activities design characteristics and health state of them. The implementation into the informatic system and its check will be developed in future.

In the field of public heritage valorisation through renovation, resilience assessment is crucial to foresee the impact of each project action, monitor the transformability thresholds and achieve more sustainable restoration projects. Within this framework, methodologies to achieve early evaluation of different project alternatives since the very preliminary design phases are supposed to be a key factor for the success of the building process, as it is highlighted by the Italian public procurement code (D.Lgs 50/2016). Therefore, the role of the contracting authority is crucial, as it is called both to activate the process through the definition of the project requirements and to accomplish the evaluation of the proposed solutions by respecting the principles of public interests, legality, transparency and responsibility.

In order to achieve these goals, the research proposes a standard methodology composed of a list of synthetic indicators and the criteria for their combination, aiming to assess the residual performances of the building and evaluate the compliance with new intended uses through the match with a set of conceivable design strategies. In this direction, two assessment tools are defined: the PAV (Performance Adequacy and Vulnerability), which is calculated on the actual state of the building for the evaluation of its residual efficiency with reference to some transformative hypothesis and then integrated in a grid of design strategies, and the RTE (Resilience Threshold Evaluation) though to measure the expected transformative impacts on the building and their positive or negative implications within its resilience thresholds.

The methodology is implemented in a BIM-based process with the definition of a simplified informative model that makes it possible to retrieve all the information and to define the calculation rules in order to activate the defined methodology with the advantage of ensuring time-saving, data-safety and transparency in the process.

The goal of this paper is to present a usable and effective tool to evaluate residential façade retrofitting solutions in early stages of design, keeping into account envelope features and installation issues. Decarbonisation goals set for 2050 impose existing building stock renovation and energy retrofit. Several drivers are available in EU Countries to trigger these operations. Nonetheless, the renovation rate in EU Member States remains low: barriers to building retrofit are identified, and a main issue in this sense is the lack of use of Decision Support Systems. DSS exist but are often neglected by building designers or owners, due to different reasons. Existing methodologies do not take into account the quantity and quality of information available at the various stages of building life cycle; furthermore, they mainly focus on energy related aspects, neglecting technological and installation related factors. This paper aims at providing an LCC-based decision framework to help decision makers in early stages of design to choose the most suitable technology for building façade retrofitting. A Utility Function expressing LCC for residential building renovation is provided, focusing on façades renovation and on installation and morphology related aspects. Information and data flow through the phases is presented and discussed, showing how the proposed method can be adapted to different stages, and testing its robustness through sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. Three main categories of renovation technologies are analysed (ventilated façade, ETICS, and prefabricated solutions). The proposed method is applied to a residential case study building. The adaptability of the tool to different stages of design is discussed, and further potential applications are presented.

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is a key issue in the design and renovation of any indoor building environment. It is comprised of different aspects (e.g. visual, thermal, acoustic comfort, etc.), which directly affect the building occupants' wellbeing. Studies on this topic have grown rapidly in recent years, as the time that occupants spend indoors is increasing. In this regard, indoor luminous conditions are crucial for providing sufficient task illuminance as well as to stimulate the human circadian system. Insufficient lighting conditions have been proven to be related with reduced productivity/learnability, mood swings and health disorders, thus emphasizing the necessity for further research in this field. Therefore, proper performance evaluation criteria for managing and optimizing lighting spectral composition is needed. For instance, indoor lighting conditions can be evaluated by quantity, intensity, and/or uniformity, but also by spectral content, which determines the energy conveyed and the level at which the human body is stimulated. This spectral content can vary depending on the preferred or prevalent light source, interior finishes and glazing properties generating a singular indoor lighting environment. Thus, a preliminary study on the variation of the indoor daylight spectral content is conducted using a scaled model, applying various glazing types and interior finishes. Then, daylight simulations are performed on a calibrated virtual model to evaluate the effect of various environmental conditions. Results show a considerable impact of the interior finishes as well as glazing type on the attained circadian potential of studied indoor environment.

For the purposes of regeneration of the consolidated city it is increasingly important to have the knowledge of the micro-scale distribution of the vulnerability of the population to the consequences of climate change and increasing urbanization. The work to be presented starts with the creation of maps of the risk classification induced by the heat islands in the city of Parma, and aims to investigate which are the most effective strategies that a Public Administration can adopt. The maps that have been created allow to assess the risk for the fragile population at the level of the single building. They relate the climatic datum of thermal variation with the population residing within each building, and verify the causal relationship with the soil sealing and with the morphology of the urban fabric. The results of the study can help to identify the thermal hot spot, receivers of specific mitigation actions. The risk map is itself a tool to develop multilevel actions, designed according to the peculiarities of the sites, where the possible adaptive solutions are compared with the physical and morphological characteristics of the places. The positive function of green infrastructures (contrast of overheating, flood mitigation, creation of places and services with a recreational function) is acquired by research and urban planning practice. It is equally well known the difficulty faced by Local Authorities in the maintenance and increase of unbuilt public areas, fundamental for the connection of ecological networks.

With an exemplary role, the improvement of energy efficiency in public buildings is in the forefront of the European policies for smart and sustainable growth. However, very often the sector is characterized by large and old constructions that may also be marked by historical and cultural value and whose energy consumption is hard to be reduced, due to specific constraints. In order to operate in this field, the definition of a solid knowledge framework on the built environment appears to be the only viable starting point. Therefore, the analysis of the delicate balance between conservation and transformation should be investigated with a multi-scalar approach able to move from the city to the building elements. For this reason, it is extremely important to provide tools for monitoring and analysing the energy behaviour of the public building stocks to those actors that are involved in their management. The research here presented proposes a workflow to implement a web platform based on a three-dimensional GIS (Geographic Information System) interoperable with BIM (Building Information Modeling) and able to store, handle and display information on building assets and their energy consumption. With the aim of defining a repeatable model, the process starts from easily retrievable data on the built environment and uses standard data models and classification systems. The three-dimensional model is built in a semi-automated way from the combination of the two-dimensional GIS cartography of the municipality and from the point cloud resulting from a LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) national survey campaign. The set of thermal properties and energy data can be retrieved from the energy performance certificate of the buildings. In order to test and validate the process, an application on the building stock owned by the University of Pavia (Italy) is presented. Nine complexes distribute inside the historical centre of the city and heterogeneously dated from the X to the XX century are considered. After the definition of the model and its representation inside the web environment, an example of use is displayed with reference to a comparative energy analysis of different buildings.

The analysis of the solar potential carried out in a defined territorial context and considered as a case study, intends to estimate the potential production of electricity from solar sources starting from a survey on the availability of the present surfaces.

The use of energy from renewable sources for public purposes, obtained through the installation of integrated photovoltaic systems in public urban areas available and appropriately identified, can represent a valid energy strategy in response to the provisions of the European Directive 2009/28 / EC.

In this study we want to show how the upgrading of public areas for parking, areas of interchange, or for the shelter of pedestrians in holding areas for public transport or in parking ones for cars can become an opportunity for energy production.

In fact, all these public spaces can be transformed into places designed to characterize and redevelop the built space with the use of appropriately designed urban furnishing elements that integrate, for example, the function of shelter and energy production. This research project aimed at developing a methodology of systematic approach that can represent a further element that is part of the policies that can be drawn up in the next 30 years towards a decarbonisation in the territorial area taken into consideration.

The methodology developed concerned the following points:

1) Identification of the areas and spaces present in the territory taken as a case study, suitable for an upgrading project and/or for the insertion of urban furnishing elements made with integrated photovoltaic panels;

2) Calculation of usable areas and consequent calculation of installable photovoltaic surfaces;

3) Identification of the elements of urban furniture made with integrated photovoltaic panels and present in the market.

The work identifies and computes, through the use of specific softwares, the areas and spaces suitable for the insertion of integrated photovoltaic systems. Subsequently, after identifying the areas, the quantities of hypothetically installable photovoltaic surfaces and the quantities of energy that can be produced are calculated. The latter are then compared with the quantities needed to cover the energy requirements for public lighting.

In the building sector, the new standards for energy efficiency are reducing the energy consumption and the carbon emissions for building operation to nearly zero. As a result, the greenhouse gases emissions and related environmental impacts from materials production, and especially insulation, are becoming dominant. In the next future, most of building stock is expected to be refurbished and a great amount of construction materials will be consequently required. A relevant share of waste is generated from building construction and demolition and limiting the volume is a priority of the EU community. In this work the renovation of industrial buildings in a dismissed area located in Lecco, Italy, was considered as case study. Five alternative construction systems for renovating the building envelopes were assumed, and a life cycle assessment (LCA) adopted in order to measure the environmental impact of each alternative. The results where compared with a scenario which includes demolition and reconstruction of a similar building with the same net volume and thermal resistance. The results showed that timber and concrete are the most valuable materials to rebuild the structures in case of demolition, contrarily to steel which leads generally to higher environmental impacts, except land use. Refurbishment scenarios generally account for a lower global warming potential (GWP) even if demolition, waste treatment and benefit from recycling/reuse are taken into account.

Planning the life cycle of a building, that is designing its resilience, is progressively increasing its relevance: the rehabilitation is considered a sustainable approach to the performance improvement of the built patrimony, which enables the extension of the useful life, compared to the more radical intervention of demolition and reconstruction. The most relevant aspects related to building performance regard the seismic rehabilitation of structures and the energy retrofitting of envelopes and installations. However, these are invasive and economically relevant interventions, that a private investor unlikely faces without specific normative or economic inputs. For this reason, the rehabilitation of public buildings and, particularly of public housing assumes a leading role in the building sector. The integrated approach of deep renovations leads to new strategies of life cycle planning and management based on the identification of environmental performance indicators with the goal of evaluating intervention alternatives, balancing the two – seismic and energy – strategies. An innovative approach to the seismic and energy rehabilitation of public housing in the Mediterranean area has been studied in the European research project Pro-GET-onE, coordinated by the University of Bologna. The research is based on the realization of an experimental exoskeleton to improve the combined seismic and energy performances. The solution also generates an economic surplus as a consequence of the increased living surfaces. This paper reports some results of the Life Cycle Assessment and the Life Cycle Cost Assessment related to this project.

In recent years, the promotion of nearly-Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), has become a priority for European member states. In order to get this label, typically, a monthly or yearly energy balance of energy use through the exploitation of renewable energy sources (RES) is required, but not a hourly balance. This approach may determine a low exploitation of the RES on site in the case of solar and wind energy, because they are intermittent by nature. Moreover, energy production and energy use peaks are often in mismatch during the day. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) offer a solution to better integrate RES into buildings as well as into the grid, increasing its reliability and minimizing interactions. The cost of these systems is rapidly decreasing, opening new economic opportunities for investors. However, for many applications they do not yet represent the optimal cost-effective solution due to the lifespan of their short-lived components. The paper investigates the technical and economic feasibility of integrating a BESS into a high-performance residential building in the Mediterranean climate based on the outcomes of an original case study based research. The existing photovoltaic system combined with the BESS may substantially optimize the energy use, maximizing the self-consumption and minimizing grid interactions; nevertheless, the pay-back time may become fully-attractive for the analysed building, only if BESS costs will halve by 2030.

The construction sector today is characterized by demands for new qualities in the field of energy efficiency. This attention has taken on an even more incisive role with the European Directives 2010/31/UE and 2012/27/UE, which obliged Member States to implement actions for energy saving by paying more attention to the planning phase. The general goal of the research is to analyse the smart envelope by verifying the influence that the reference climate context has on the energy efficiency of buildings, making progress in the study of the principles of smart buildings linked to an integrated renewable energy system monitored in order to put it directly in communication with the final user. In fact, it is important not only the choice of materials, but also the right contextualization and their correct installation to provide more information for better control and more efficient energy management from the building level up to small urban areas, "matrioska effect". The envelope thus becomes the protagonist par excellence for the correct management of energy flows both in and out.

The energy efficiency of buildings, in fact, is mainly determined by the performance of the envelopes, the efficiency of the facilities, the use of renewable energy sources, the passive control systems of winter and summer comfort. Performance that depends on various factors, such as shape, orientation, transparent surfaces, solar gains, ventilation, technological systems used, materials ... This need to design in a "renovated" has changed the concept of technical construction elements developing increasingly smart components following the rules of automation, or more specifically those of automation and management of technologies through the use of domotic for existing interactions with the climate context of reference. Therefore the research aims to develop a methodology that provides more information on the energy performance of home automation systems.

The increase in the energy need for cooling is one of the major challenges in nearly Zero Energy Buildings. Recent constructions are characterized by high thermal insulation levels, which can be effective in preventing summer discomfort in combination with accurate control of solar gains through glazed surfaces and discharge of overall gains via ventilation. In addition, urbanization, densification and the global warming trends registered in the last decades can increase the risk and magnitude of overheating effect if an accurate design and use of correct technologies and good practices are not considered. The paper investigates the effects and the potential of natural night ventilation, as a strategy to reduce the energy need for cooling even taking into account the evolution of surrounding urban area with the exacerbation of urban heat island under future weather projections. Among the different tools available for the assessment of the cooling potential in buildings, the research focuses on two methodologies, which are adaptable to the conceptual design phase, where a first approximation of the natural ventilation potential is required. The study is developed on the weather datasets referred to the area of Milan and shows the future evolution of the night cooling potential, highlighting the importance of orienting building design towards greater integration between different passive cooling strategies for the summer period.

European standards had already set Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) as the current and mandatory goal for the construction market. Thus, several design strategies have been developed, in order to define the best practices towards NZEB targets: high performances of construction components, integrated with high energy-efficiency solutions for building systems. The Active House Vision and evaluative approach on buildings summarize the current protocols, accounting the three principles of Comfort, Energy and Environment to parametrically design and assess buildings until their "as-built" status. However, at that point of the design process, this evaluation relies mainly on design simulations, which do not properly consider the occupants' component, resulting in a gap between forecast and real performances. Since predictive models of users-building interactions are underway, the paper focuses on the building operation stage of existing and validated NZEBuildings, addressing the performance-gap as related to the final users' mismanagement of the building system (envelope and installations). Referring to cognitive buildings as sensors-equipped and smart Active Houses, the method proposes a user-friendly visualization of (big) real-data as a possible solution for the final-user training and awareness. This approach has been applied to the case study of VELUXlab, a real building prototype of Politecnico di Milano, already validated as the first Italian NZEB inside a university campus and "as-built" Active House. The outcomes of the paper enhance the potentials of the current knowledge and design practice to achieve a sustainable and healthier built environment, looking at the future but working today.

In the context of "2030 climate & energy framework" and "2050 low-carbon economy" it is essential to understand which the elements that affect most buildings energy needs are. The main aim of this study is to identify and to optimize these factors in order to improve energy performance of schools by minimizing energy consumption. The study presented was carried out through a sensitivity analysis in order to determine which factors most affect energy consumption with respect a school typological model adopted as the reference model considering climate zones D and B. The analysis evaluated: shape, different materials for insulation, thickness of insulation layer for façade and for roof, window to wall ratio (WWR) for each orientation, type of solar shading for south orientation, integration of vertical solar shading for east and west orientation, contribution of ventilation and some parameters related to systems. Results pointed out that for this type of buildings the ventilation requirements for air changes is the factor that most affects the energy demand both for heating and cooling. At the same time also the variation of shape, of thickness insulation layer for roof and of WWR influence is significant.

In the vast majority of new buildings, energy and comfort requirements are met mostly by active systems that are often expensive, energy intensive, and complex to maintain. At the same time, advances in the use of digital tools for the design and fabrication of unitised curtain wall systems have substantially reduced the costs associated to non-planar surfaces in building envelopes. As a result, buildings deploy an increasing level of surface geometry articulation that is mostly used for decorative effects. By and large, the flourishing of a new formal vocabulary, enabled by digital tools, rarely translated into buildings that perform better. The research proposes the use of non-planar surface geometries for precise calibration in tilt angle and orientation of individual panels in curtain walls, as an effective passive design strategy. The goal is to improve visual comfort for users, limiting potential glare without the use of shading or blinds and, at the same time, to provide high potential for PV production without negatively affecting daylighting levels in the building interiors. The study explores four families of three-dimensional geometries, based on size limitations and other design constraints typically associated to unitized curtain wall systems. The investigation takes into account aspects such as local climate data, orientation, glass properties, morphology of the façade unit, indoor visual comfort, energy efficiency and energy production. Results show that all four families can be optimised to meet LEED requirements of sDA > 50% and ASE < 10% in office buildings, delivering better performances when compared to a flat facade.

Metropolitan cities can play a primary role in the creation of more resilient urban environments, by developing public interventions that improve social cohesion, and economic and environmental sustainability. The metropolitan city of Milan has emerged among the first European cities that successfully overcame the economic crisis without losing their leadership role. Thus, we analyzed the Milanese experience as an example of urban resilience, in the context of a Research Project of Relevant National Interest (PRIN) entitled "Metropolitan Cities: Economic-territorial strategies, financial constraints, and circular regeneration".

In a first stage, we studied the investments of the major real estate players who have directed their attention to Milan. Our scrutiny showed that most of the investments concentrate in recent urban renewal programs, which entail the re-location of corporate headquarters. A conspicuous portion of commercial real estate hosts fashion companies, as Milan attracts many brands from all over the world.

In a second stage, we investigated in more detail the property settlement dynamics that drive corporate real estate development and re-location in the territory of Milan. This showed some urban clusters that the service and fashion sectors are respectively interested in.

Finally, we looked into the re-location strategies of eight leader companies, half of which in the fashion sector and half in the general services. Through interviews with their real estate managers, we scrutinized their choice of location in Milan, their environmental sustainability requirements, and added value that they expect to obtain. The fashion sector resulted as particularly keen on rehabilitating divested sites or abandoned buildings, inherited from previous industrial/productive activities.

Our scrutiny demonstrated that regeneration projects, can successfully meet the objectives of companies, while matching the goals of public interventions to improve social cohesion, and economic and environmental sustainability. This evidence can inform investors, organizations, and designers, and support them in the implementation of strategies to improve urban resilience.

The report illustrate the results of the survey have been evaluated in the Research Project for Relevant National Interest "Metropolitan cities: economic-territorial strategies, financial bonds and circular regeneration". Among its objectives, the research aims to represent a compendium of the financial picture, the economic dynamics and the territorial structure in which the new metropolitan institutions will operate, by means of the structural changes of economics and legislative system. The phenomenon of urbanization of the Metropolitan Cities is analyzed proposing a framework for the analysis of the real estate profile on a metropolitan scale, in order to understand the role of this entity in relation to the aspects of social cohesion and economic-environmental sustainability. Through the use of dynamic and interactive instruments, a reading system for the real estate market value profile in the metropolitan cities has been developed. The framework for the analysis of the real estate profile on a metropolitan scale is experimentally applied to the case study of Milan, but can be reproduced on a national scale.

The application of innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to the field of Urban Facility Management (UFM) outlines new possibilities for optimizing existing services and for developing new services based on the key concepts of: Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, information sharing and smart applications. Such ICT-based services could potentially be able to: transform the demand for infrastructures and physical assets; participate to requalification processes; influence the sustainability of the built environment as well as the economic value of urban areas. Starting from this premise, the paper deals with the contents and the current results of an ongoing research whose aim is to propose sets of classification and coding rules and a framework for identifying, analysing and linking Smart Cities (SC) domains and sub-domains, related UFM services and the various levels of enabling ICT technologies. The application of the proposed framework to a selected representative sample made up by both European Initiatives (e.g. H2020 projects) involved with SC solutions at the urban scale and virtuous cases of cities that have implemented smart solutions, allows to collect, allocate and process information, in a unified way, in order to:

• identify and describe the current main trends within each of the SC domains (e.g. mobility, energy, waste, building, governance) and sub-domains;

• implement a taxonomy of UFM services, including related characterising parameters and stakeholders;

• identify and analyse, according to reading keys, smart UFM services that may have meaningful impacts (accessibility, transport, land-use, etc.) on urban areas;

• draw the current innovative scenarios of smart UFM services enabled by ICTs, characterized by information sharing (Big Data flows) and by the integration of physical and digital infrastructures and assets;

• highlight the emerging and widespread enabling technologies for smart UFM services, related to each of the layers of the technological infrastructure (e.g. sensing, network, platform, analytics, applications);

• investigate the possibility of the creation of context-aware communities through the inclusion of multiple social components.

The research, which is part of the PRIN research "Metropolitan cities: economic-territorial strategies, financial constraints and circular regeneration", aims at providing interpretive keys and structured information, useful to study, evaluate and compare possible influences and impacts of the smart UFM services on the sustainability of the urban environment and on the dynamics of property values. The scenario that emerges from the analysis is inscribed in the broader framework of the circular economy where, with the support of ICTs -based services, cities can put in place virtuous processes to reduce, recycle and reuse waste.

In the last decade, social housing entered the real estate market and became a real estate product able to offer affordable housing and services on the market. The realization of social housing involves private and non-profit organizations - in support of public welfare – in order to achieve a housing policy of public interest.

The researches by Housing Europe show that the most effective way to reach this objective is represented by Social Management, which is the capacity to join management of real estate and social aspects, promoted by independent private subjects with a mission of public or philanthropic interest. Social Management consists in the provision of social promotion and asset management services and is distinguished from a traditional management for the central role of inhabitants and community receiving the services.

In addition to Building and Facility Management activities (and partly Property Management) aimed at preserving real estate value, the Social Manager carries out all activities addressed service beneficiaries attributable to Community Management area, characterizing them with the centrality of the community through an integrated management model.

When the role of the Social Manager is carried out by Cooperatives Enterprises, the instance of defining collaborative communities is intrinsically fulfilled through the skills deriving from the cooperative tradition who by their nature represent an important asset for structuring this type of management.

In the Social Housing sector, the Social Manager, the more Cooperative, with its significant track record in implementing the practices of conjunction between owner and inhabitants, represents a potential for carrying out the important guarantee function referred to at the beginning. It is in the management of the community of beneficiaries of social housing that the guarantee element for the achievement of the general interest in housing policies realized in the forms of private public partnership.

The Social Manager can in fact constitute the guarantor of the service of general interest contained in the general definition of "social housing" introduced by the D.M. April 22, 2008. The paper presents the results of the research "How to create and regenerate social value through social housing" promoted by Politecnico di Milano and Legacoop Abitanti; it'll describe how the social housing management enterprises could represent the driver of social innovation and of inclusive growth in the regeneration of built environment.

Housing models that target rather typical family structures are increasingly failing to meet the needs of the new social changes regarding the rapid urbanization due to the mass-migration to cities, the lack of affordable housing, and the adoption of the sharing economy practices. As an architectural counterpart of the social dimension of sustainable development, co-living is introduced as a connected way of living, enabling sustainable living practices through efficient use of resources and space while sharing consumption. With respect to this, adapted collective residential units (namely informal co-living environments) come into use in places where affording a house becomes a challenging aspect and the conventional residential units do not reflect the transforming social demographics and economy. The reflection of the requirements of changing social and economic structures on urban settings can be seen in Turkish houses as well. This research, accordingly, focuses on co-living environments in Ankara, Turkey that were transformed from typical single-family residential units by its residents. Through investigating these co-living spaces, it is aimed to contribute to the current understanding of co-living practices, explore the spatial, economic and social underpinnings of these living models, and their relevance to the sustainable development while presenting initial findings regarding spatial use that can be of guidance for future co-living design processes.

This paper focuses on understanding, education, and knowledge gaps on topics related to sustainable development such as urban metabolism, responsible use of natural resources, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This work is part of a broader study that aims at disseminating education on topics at all level of societies, including minority groups such as children, elderly, persons with disabilities, students and academics, women, LGBTI+, and homeless and refugees. The current study tackles students and academics specifically and illustrates the relationship between cultural background (country and continent of origin) and perceptions of sustainable development and politics at the local level. For this analysis, data were analysed and collected at the Politecnico di Milano, Milan (Italy) using structured interviews and survey questionnaires. Findings provide a deeper understanding of students and academic sensitivities of SDGs and local political system spatial patterns by continent across the world.

This research project introduces an innovative tool promoting participatory processes for sustainability in the Public Housing system where different players are involved. It deals with a specific learning process aiming at fostering a responsible behaviour by the occupants, and envisages calling in new Players, namely, senior Students from technical high schools, to act as trainers themselves and coach the Tenants through on-going meetings. An Application called ASA (Sustainable Housing Approach in English) will be developed to include the information provided by the Tenants about their family households and housing units during the coaching sessions, and collected by the student-coaches. The characteristics of the ASA as a knowledge and management tool intended to improve savings and wellbeing are described. Available on iPad and accessible to all Tenants in the training environment, the ASA can be downloaded to mobile devices. Talking of outcomes, the logical steps making up the ASA's dynamic process are outlined. The economic and social benefits for the different Players are outlined as well.

The digitalisation of construction sector introduces opportunities for all the actors of AEC chain. Using the virtualisation of real entities, with models of buildings, infrastructures or of the environment (BIM: Building Information Model), it could be possible to simulate the sustainability of new property developments or renewal ones (capex/opex; BS PAS 1192-2-3 [1] [2]). With the object-oriented programming, the new ICT tools for AEC sector can rework on the data themselves, with the classes and attributes they have "learned". At the beginning, the typology of classes and attributes were defined in BIM authoring software. To complete all the information required for every different use, the actors can find other attributes (of objects) they may need in other database existing on the market. These extended attributes could be linked to the BIM authoring objects to complete their functionality in all phases of the construction process. Thus, all the attributes of each object are now defined by the software houses, by public or private organisations (and their BIM tools) or by every single manufacturer company. However, there isn't an international standard other than the Italian UNI 11337-3:2015 [3]. To improve this status quo, increase the implementation of sustainability simulation and life cycling data management in AEC process, it is necessary to define a new specific technical standard of BIM object attributes. BIMReL is the first BIM object library that uses the common information structure and the essential characteristics for CE mark of CPR 350/2011 (Construction Product Regulation) [4], to define the attributes of the virtual objects like the real products. The architecture of BIMReL is based on the data structure of newly released Italian standard UNI 11337-3 (2019) and, as a consequence, part of the EN draft standard at European CEN 442 Technical Committee (WG 4).

Several research and development projects in the construction industry show the need of coherent product libraries to ease information sharing among involved stakeholders. In these projects, designers are often the main actors addressed in the creation and fruition of such product libraries. Besides designers, the presented research addresses the needs of manufacturers, clients and users. To achieve this coherence of product libraries, there are issues such as standardisation of product data templates, numerosity and heterogeneity of products categories, interoperability in sharing data and scarce thrust of manufacturers in developing extensive libraries. Considering the European directives and regulations, manufacturers are required to provide detailed and structured information about their products, e.g. in the form of CE marks and/or Declaration of Performance (DOP). Hence, developing data structures that are already compliant with CE marks and DOPs information requirements improves manufacturers' capability of promoting their products. Moreover, this makes clients and users aware of provided information, giving them the possibility of comparing performances of different products and consequently choosing only those products that fit better their needs. The aim of the here described research activity is twofold: defining a common data structure for product data and using existing technologies to share these data. The presented research proposes a conceptual model for providing such structure for product data to facilitate Product Data Management (PDM). This structure relies on standardised Product Data Templates (PDT) and Product Data Sheets (PDS) for enhancing the sharing process within to a Building Information Modelling (BIM) environment. Moreover, an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) structure has been developed for transferring product data allowing a machine-readable exchange of information. The result of the described research is the definition of information requirements for developing an online product library that permits a user-friendly consultation by stakeholders and an automated extraction of data by software.

Sustainability certification of construction products is a key issue to be managed and controlled during the construction phase, in order to implement design choices and reduce buildings impact on the environment. Within this context, sustainability assessment protocols play an important role, since they provide a systematic approach for the sustainability rating of the building. The aim of this research is to define a BIM-based methodology to automate the sustainability certification process in construction phase. According to the proposed methodology, the contractor proposes a building component whose technical data are uploaded to a Document Management System (DMS) used as Common Data Environment (CDE). If the component passes a set of semi-automated authorisation steps, compliant with the work supervisor's, client's, and sustainability accredited professional's needs, then it is uploaded to the BIM Model. The case study (an office building in Italy) confirmed that the proposed methodology allows to achieve a higher efficiency, minimizing the certification times and efforts. Nevertheless, this methodology should be validated in further case studies. Moreover, it may be improved and further automated to cope with product dictionaries and templates under development in CEN technical committee 442.

I4.0 revolution is permeating every technical sector, by promoting deployment of enabling technologies (ETs), also in the facility management (FM) discipline. As FM regards the integration of processes within an organization to support activities, it is clear how ETs can trigger, in the FM area, significant innovations like a better failure knowledge management and a sustainable use of resources. More specifically, the implementation in building maintenance of dynamic systems, linked to sensors networks, can allow changes into knowledge management and FM decision-making processes. Starting from these premises, the paper deals with an ongoing research, whose aim is to investigate how ETs may innovate the traditional maintenance strategies with new approaches in corrective, condition-based and predetermined maintenance. According to the above, building maintenance, which is traditionally reactive, may actually become proactive if failure management policy is set. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how ETs adoption may promote innovation in FM processes focusing on maintenance in service equipment field. More specifically, an operative and methodological framework for reaching proactive maintenance is described through the support of a case study concerning two major healthcare infrastructures in Italy, managed by a major FM company.

IoT networks for data gathering in the buildings allow to control and manage the operational phase of the systems for ventilation and IAQ, optimizing the energy flows and the indoor comfort conditions. The concept of Cognitive Building steers the implementation of such networks in the assets considering the sensors as scattered systems to inform and actuate the adaptation strategies which are crucial when variables have to be included in the process management. Variables as weather, occupancy flows during the day, energy production by renewable energies, energy storage strategies, affect the indoor conditions, the rate of use of the HVAC systems and the energy management of the used/storage resources. The eLUX lab at the Smart Campus of the University of Brescia is a pilot building in the field and it has been monitoring since 2017. The indoor conditions monitoring could unveil critical situations defined by temperature, humidity and indoor air quality (IAQ) in the educational spaces and envisage strategies and scenarios related to energy demand defined by the occupancy stream. The IoT network collects data about indoor air quality in the different spaces and it is used to verify and increase the accuracy on occupancy estimation. The HVAC management referred to the effective occupancy can enable an energy management process based on user-centred approach empowering an increment of the comfort hours facing critical situations and it is possible to promote actuation strategies preserving energy efficiency and IAQ (e.g. increase ventilation to decrease the CO2 concentration, decrease temperature and control relative humidity in the indoor spaces by window opening or modulation of the fans and dehumidification systems activation). The educational spaces have been adopted as case studies to analyse the actual indoor conditions and come up with a detailed description of the profiles of use (i.e. occupancy, lighting, equipment, HVAC, CO2) supporting effective management policies. The paper describes the analyses on the data collected to understand when and how the indoor conditions can be improved to preserve the learning performance of the users. The research addresses one of the main topics of the eLUX living lab.

While it is of primary importance to deliver high performance architecture within constraints of time and money, the integration between structural and energy-based aspects presents significant challenges for the organisation of the design process, especially in the early stages. In the case of complex envelopes, such as glazed gridshells, these engineering-related aspects should be considered from multiple points of view from the very beginning of the concept development, exploiting the potential conflicts between architects and engineers to let creative solutions emerge, and thus avoiding expensive and time-consuming design modifications downstream. This paper aims to define the framework required to integrate a multi-objective optimisation capable of combining such aspects into an integrated flow of information. Such an integrated analysis presents difficulties because, in the early design phases, conceptual changes happen faster than computational capacity; so, to overcome this obstacle it is necessary to define an iterative flow of information between structural and energy-based procedures, while at the same time taking into account the aesthetic requirements. This particular flow not only guarantees a correct passage of technical data among different software tools, but it also allows for a better communication and comprehension of information between diverse actors, such as architects and engineers. Based on this specific plan, a conceptual framework for optimising gridshells under structural, geometrical and energy-based criteria is developed and presented. The final goal of such a procedure is not, clearly, to replace the designer, but to give guidance to transform potential conflict into creative discussion and improve the efficiency of the later phases of the design process.