Multiple-Benefits from Buildings’ Refurbishment: Evidence from Smart City Projects in Europe
Abstract
Given the necessity of strengthening the transition towards a smarter, more sustainable low-carbon future, Smart Cities are considered a powerful tool. However, Smart City projects involving the refurbishment of existing buildings carry key barriers to implementation. The most prominent ones are: (i) a wide time discrepancy between appreciable environmental and economic benefits and immediate costs of action and (ii) economic benefits that might not accrue to who bears the cost of the intervention. This research provides a clue to solving this impasse based on the concept of multiple-benefits evaluation stemming from a shift in perspective from mitigation costs to development opportunities. We considered the costs of interventions on the European building stock under the Smart City projects to assess the multiple-benefits delivered to society. Starting from the monetary aspects of single projects, we identified multipliers to assess three different types of multiple-benefits: (i) Energy savings; (ii) Health and well-being; and iii.) Employment. Our findings indicate that in a time span of 14 years (2005–2018), an amount of about 260 million Euros invested in such projects lead to: (i) an accumulated saving potential of approximately 40 kilotons of oil equivalent, corresponding to 465 GWh; (ii) a reduction in air pollution corresponding to a value of 3 million Euros in avoided costs; and (iii) the creation of around 1,000 jobs with an average duration of 5 years. Considering that most of such investments occurred during the latest economic recession, the impact of the aforementioned multi-benefits appears to be not negligible.
Keywords
Multiple-benefits Smart city projects Deep energy retrofits European building stockTiles-Reflection: Designing for Reflective Learning and Change Behaviour in the Smart City
Conference paper
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Abstract
Modern cities are increasing in geographical size, population and number. While this development ascribes cities an important function, it also entails various challenges. Efficient urban mobility, energy saving, waste reduction and increased citizen participation in public life are some of the pressing challenges recognized by the United Nations. Retaining livable cities necessitates a change in behaviour in the citizens, promoting sustainability and seeking an increase in the quality of life. Technology possesses the capabilities of mediating behaviour change. A review of existing works highlighted a rather unilateral utilization of technology, mostly consisting of mobile devices, employment of persuasive strategies for guiding behaviour change, and late end-user involvement in the design of the application, primarily for testing purposes. These findings leave the door open to unexplored research approaches, including opportunities stemming from the Internet of Things, reflective learning as behaviour change strategy, and active involvement of end-users in the design and development process. We present Tiles-Reflection, an extension of the Tiles toolkit, a card-based ideation toolkit for the Internet of Things. The extension comprises components for reflective learning, allowing thus non-expert end-users to co-create behaviour change applications. The results of the evaluation suggest that the tool was perceived as useful by participants, fostering reflection on different aspects connected to societal challenges in the smart city. Furthermore, application ideas developed by the users successfully implemented the reflective learning model adopted.
Keywords
IoT Reflective learning Smart citiesConnotation and Significance of Intelligent City Construction
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‘Smart city’ proposed by IBM is defined as to deploy information and communication technology to monitor, analyze and integrate various key information for city operation system before making smart correspondence to varying demands covering people’s livelihood, environmental conservation, public safety, city services and industrial and commercial activities. The essence of definition proposed by IBM is to utilize advanced information technology to attain smart management and operation before creating a rosier life to people and facilitating harmonious and sustainable growth in cities.
A Global Review on Smart City Development
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Before the proposal of Smart City, all countries and regions around the world were carrying out the construction of Digital City and Wireless City. In the late years, they gradually converted to the building of Smart City, which actually reflects a changing from digitalization to intelligence.
Review on Internet of Things (IoT): Making the World Smart
Abstract
Internet of things (IoT) is a network of objects linked to cyberspace. It increases rapidly and reaches all around, not only limited to smartphone or home appliances but employed in factories, business, and health care because it enhances efficiency, reduces cost, and saves lives. Think a world where billions of objects can feel, convey, and share information, and all interlinked over public or private Internet protocol (IP) networks. These interrelated things have data usually gathered, tested, and conformed to initiate an exercise, allowing a wealth of understanding for designing, managing, and judgment making. This is the world of the Internet of things (IoT). The Internet of things (IoT) is the upcoming trend of creation that assures to be better and makes our everyday life optimal, smarter, which is based on having intelligence devices and smart things operating at same time. Using Internet protocol (IP) facility, things can now be linked to the Internet, so permitting them to be understood, guided, and managed at every time and at every place. IoT is used in number of fields including designing smart city, connected vehicle, etc. This paper presents a review on IoT and depicts key challenges on the same field.
Keywords
Internet of things (IoT) IoT application IoT architecture IoT challenges Radio frequency identification (RFID)IoT-Based Monitoring and Smart Planning of Urban Solid Waste Management
Abstract
The tremendous growth in the rate of urbanization in the past few decades has in turn increased the need for a stable and sustainable urban development plan. Solid waste collection is a very complex process that involves efficient management of the entire system, starting from the collection to the dumping of wastes, hygienically. This paper describes the real-time monitoring and management of waste collection system, thus, enabling us to be excused from collecting semi-empty bins. Furthermore, the incoming data can be effective to determine the minimum number of vehicles associated or bins to distribute. This paper hence gains insights into the status of waste in a city and therefore contributes to a cost-efficient, eco-friendly and more systematic way of waste collection.
Keywords
Solid waste management Internet of Things (IoT) Smart bin Urbanization SensorsThe Form of Small Town Centres
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To better realign them with sustainable planning, it is important to first understand the historic evolution of pre- and post-World War II small towns. Following a description of their origins, street patterns, urban form and land use, the chapter offers guiding principles for conceptual strategies on how best to make them sustainable while strengthening their centres. These include strategic densification, street patterns, architectural forms, comfortable microclimates, and environmentally sensitive land use.
Sustainable Wastewater Management Through Decentralized Systems: Case Studies
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There is a significant increase in the urban population in developing countries like India and consequently, this has thrown up a major challenge to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) entrusted with the task of waste management. In India, less than 20% of the wastewater generated is getting treated. Recent studies indicate that the supply is roughly equal to the demand for the country, hiding wide regional variations with acute shortages in many parts. Since economic growth implies increased water use, the water situation can be expected to worsen rapidly. Even though water resources are not scarce from the perspective of total available water volumes, the precipitation is highly variable in time and space. In addition, the untreated or partially treated wastewater from human settlements is polluting the existing freshwater bodies, creating shortage of freshwater for different uses. Moreover, many studies have shown that centralized treatment plants are not a sustainable solution for countries like India, where the power supply is rarely continuous, and operation and maintenance are not secured. Hence, it will be advisable to treat the wastewater near to the point of generation and reuse it so that the environment is protected and reliable source of water supply is provided. Innovative decentralized wastewater treatment plants aiming not only at treating the wastewater but also providing other benefits such as the reuse of water, energy reuse or nutrient reuse—depending on the local context—are the need of the daywater treatment systems. Any sustainable wastewater management system should be oriented toward the 3R concept, i.e., reduce, recycle, and reuse. However, the selection of technologies/management strategies will be depending on the economic status of the society. An integrated wastewater management system is the base for a sustainable development in urban and peri-urban areas. It is important to quantify and characterize the amount of wastewater for (i) developing effective strategies to treat the wastewater, (ii) applying different technologies, i.e., anaerobic, followed by aerobic and physicochemical, and (iii) using the treated wastewater in a sustainable way taking into account the risks involved, e.g., using treated wastewater for toilet flushing, and landscaping. This chapter deals with the case studies of various sustainable decentralized/on-site wastewater treatment systems.
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