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Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2021) | Viewed by 22124

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Emilia Conte

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Guest Editor

DICATECh, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
Interests: sustainable buildings; built environment; evaluation of sustainability; building systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability issues in the construction industry have produced many improvements in the design, management, and renovation of buildings and in developing the built environment over the last 25 years. Everything related to energy, such as energy saving and efficiency and the use of renewable energies, has been widely studied and implemented. Although the energy issue is important, there are also other equally important issues, such as reducing the consumption of soil, preserving metal and mineral reserves, treating and reusing water, using recycled materials, and recycling. However, they have received less attention and, above all, are still not applied on a large scale.

This Special Issue focuses on the sustainable use and management of natural resources in buildings and in the built environment beyond the specific energy saving and efficiency and the use of renewable energies. Reducing soil consumption, reducing the use of non-renewable raw materials in buildings, using recycled materials and low-valued materials, and treating and reusing rainwater and wastewater are some, but not all, the topics of interest of this Special Issue.

Papers on strategies, policies, legislations, approaches, technologies, design methods, decision support tools, case-studies, and experimentations, which relate to the above-mentioned topics, are welcome, particularly if they use a holistic approach that deals with more than one topic in a related way and they consider the built environment as a whole.

Theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers will be considered. Review papers describing the state of art of innovations related to the main focus of this Special Issue, i.e., the sustainable use and management of natural resources in buildings and in the built environment, will also be considered. Papers related only to energy issues in buildings will not be included. Opinion papers will only be considered if they outline a suitable scenario for future research that is supported with previous research results.

Prof. Dr. Emilia Conte
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Use of Natural Resources
Natural Resource Management
Low-value Materials
Recycled Materials/Recycling
Water Saving and Reuse
Reducing Soil Consumption

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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1 pages, 120 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment

by Emilia Conte

Sustainability 2018, 10(7), 2472; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072472 - 15 Jul 2018

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1983

Abstract

n/a Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

32 pages, 3876 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Strategies for a Circular Economy in the Construction and Demolition Sector: Identifying the Factors Affecting the Recommendation of Recycled Concrete

by Valeria Superti, Cynthia Houmani, Ralph Hansmann, Ivo Baur and Claudia R. Binder

Sustainability 2021, 13(8), 4113; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084113 - 07 Apr 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3169

Abstract

With increasing urbanisation, new approaches such as the Circular Economy (CE) are needed to reduce resource consumption. In Switzerland, Construction & Demolition (C&D) waste accounts for the largest portion of waste (84%). Beyond limiting the depletion of primary resources, implementing recycling strategies for C&D waste (such as using recycled aggregates to produce recycled concrete (RC)), can also decrease the amount of landfilled C&D waste. The use of RC still faces adoption barriers. In this research, we examined the factors driving the adoption of recycled products for a CE in the C&D sector by focusing on RC for structural applications. We developed a behavioural framework to understand the determinants of architects’ decisions to recommend RC. We collected and analysed survey data from 727 respondents. The analyses focused on architects’ a priori beliefs about RC, behavioural factors affecting their recommendations of RC, and project-specific contextual factors that might play a role in the recommendation of RC. Our results show that the factors that mainly facilitate the recommendation of RC by architects are: a senior position, a high level of RC knowledge and of the Minergie label, beliefs about the reduced environmental impact of RC, as well as favourable prescriptive social norms expressed by clients and other architects. We emphasise the importance of a holistic theoretical framework in approaching decision-making processes related to the adoption of innovation, and the importance of the agency of each involved actor for a transition towards a circular construction sector. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment)

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16 pages, 1786 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Towards Urban Mining—Estimating the Potential Environmental Benefits by Applying an Alternative Construction Practice. A Case Study from Switzerland

by Efstathios Kakkos, Felix Heisel, Dirk E. Hebel and Roland Hischier

Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 5041; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125041 - 19 Jun 2020

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 5722

Abstract

Modern cities emerged as the main accumulator for primary and waste materials. Recovery of both types from buildings after demolition/disassembly creates a secondary material stream that could relieve pressure from primary resources. Urban mining represents this circular approach, and its application depends on redefining current construction practice. Through the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and assuming primary resources as step zero of urban mining, this study estimates the impacts and benefits of conventional versus a circular construction practice applied to various buildings with different parameters and the country-level environmental potential savings that could be achieved through this switch in construction practice—using the increase of the residential building stock in Switzerland between 2012 and 2016 as a case study and key values from the experimental unit “Urban Mining and Recycling”, designed by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel and installed inside the NEST (Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies) research building on the Empa campus in Switzerland. The results exhibit lower total impacts (at least 16% in each examined impact category) at building level and resulting benefits (i.e., 68–117 kt CO₂-Eq) at country level over five years, which can be further reduced/increased respectively by using existing or recycled components, instead of virgin materials. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment)

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24 pages, 6154 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Integration of LCA in the Planning Phases of Adaptive Buildings

by Friederike Schlegl, Clemens Honold, Sophia Leistner, Stefan Albrecht, Daniel Roth, Walter Haase, Philip Leistner, Hansgeorg Binz and Werner Sobek

Sustainability 2019, 11(16), 4299; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11164299 - 08 Aug 2019

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3211

Abstract

The high consumption of resources in the building industry requires a significant reduction of material in buildings and consequently a reduction of emissions over all phases of the life cycle. This is the aim of the Collaborative Research Centre 1244 Adaptive Skins and Structures for the Built Environment of Tomorrow, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which addresses research on the development and integration of adaptive systems in building structures and skins. New approaches in building planning are required for the implementation of adaptive buildings. Therefore, a multidisciplinary team from various fields such as architecture, civil and mechanical engineering, and system dynamics is necessary. The environmental impacts of the whole life cycle have to be considered for an integral planning process for adaptive buildings right from the beginning. For the integration of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), four temporal and content-related interfaces were identified in the planning process. Inputs and outputs of the LCA were defined for the relevant planning stages in order to enable the greatest possible benefit for the planners and to minimize the environmental impacts as far as possible. The result of the research work is a methodology that can be used in the future to reduce life cycle-related environmental impacts in the planning process of adaptive buildings (ReAdapt). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment)

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Graphical abstract

20 pages, 30255 KiB

Open AccessArticle

HEREVEA Tool for Economic and Environmental Impact Evaluation for Sustainable Planning Policy in Housing Renovation

by María Rocío Ruiz-Pérez, Mª Desirée Alba-Rodríguez, Raúl Castaño-Rosa, Jaime Solís-Guzmán and Madelyn Marrero

Sustainability 2019, 11(10), 2852; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11102852 - 19 May 2019

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3938

Abstract

Dwelling renovation has gained major importance in the European Union due to the current need for the urban regeneration of many cities, most of whose existing buildings (approximately 60%) were built in the 1960s to 1980s. These renovations require improvements in aspects such as structural integrity, accessibility, and the updating of deteriorated or obsolescent installations. This reveals that building renovations constitute a key factor in the future of the European building sector and must be included in strategies both for the reduction of this sector’s environmental impact and for climate change mitigation. In order to determine the effectiveness of renovations and their impact, the HEREVEA (Huella Ecológica de la Rehabilitacion de Viviendas en Andalucia or Ecological Footprint of the Renovation of Dwellings in Andalusia) model is proposed on data obtained from the project’s bill of quantities, its ecological footprint is assessed, and the economic-environmental feasibility of different proposals are evaluated simultaneously. The resulting model is integrated into a geographic information system, which allows georeferenced results. The tool can be used for sustainable and resilient planning policy-making at all government levels, and for the decision-making processes. In this paper, economic and environmental indicators are, for the first time, simultaneously assessed through statistical normalization obtained from 50 cases analyzed in the city of Seville. Furthermore, five case studies are assessed in detail in order to determine the sensitivity of the model. These renovations represent less than 30% of the cost and 6% of the ecological footprint of a new construction project. During the subsequent 25 years, the energy efficiency improvements could significantly reduce the CO2 emissions that are due to direct consumption. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment)

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13 pages, 3156 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Probabilistic Analysis of Major Construction Materials in the Life Cycle Embodied Environmental Cost of Korean Apartment Buildings

by Seungjun Roh, Sungho Tae, Rakhyun Kim and Suroh Park

Sustainability 2019, 11(3), 846; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030846 - 06 Feb 2019

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2869

Abstract

This study employs probabilistic analysis to evaluate the life cycle embodied environmental cost of Korean apartment buildings, with a focus on six major construction materials. To this end, the bill of materials was analyzed for 443 Korean apartment buildings according to the type and plan form, and probability density functions (PDFs) were established for the input quantities of the six materials under consideration. Life cycle scenarios were then examined for each material, and their respective life cycle embodied environmental cost factors were established, using a monetary valuation-based damage cost life cycle analysis model. The estimated environmental costs were evaluated by apartment structural type and plan form, based on probability distributions using the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). Building life cycle embodied environmental cost was estimated between 16.87 USD/m² and 23.03 USD/m² (90% confidence interval). Among the structure types analyzed, the highest costs were associated with the wall structure, followed by rigid frame and flat plate structures; at the plan form level, costs followed the sequence plate-type > mixed-type > tower type for a given type of structure. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use and Management of Natural Resources in Buildings and in the Built Environment)

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