The need for decentralized information management practices to enable a circular economy is becoming increasingly evident. Building material stock is a crucial inventory of secondary resources which contain comprehensive information for analyzing the potential of material reuse and urban harvesting.
The need for decentralized information management practices to enable a circular economy is becoming increasingly evident. As the construction sector embraces digital transformation, its value chain is shifting, steered by technological innovations focused on comprehensive value and efficient data handling. This evolution presents a contrast: while buildings can last for decades, their associated lifecycle data is ephemeral. To truly pivot towards a circular economy, we must adopt innovative methods rooted in vast data sets. Existing centralized data storage and management systems don’t meet the mark. Ensuring transparency requires not only harnessing extensive datasets within a resilient framework but also tracing data lineage for authenticity. Today’s systems lack mechanisms to adequately reward data providers, underscoring the importance of decentralized practices that can holistically manage construction data, ensuring a proactive and sustainable circular economy.
Building on the pressing need for decentralized information management practices in the construction sector, the spotlight now shifts to the emerging realm of Web3. This digital advancement, rooted in decentralized management, promises to regain control over valuable assets, be it currency, personal identities, or pivotal data. The transformative power of Web3 within an evolved data infrastructure is profound, with the potential to bypass intermediaries via robust incentive structures. In this module, we unpack the potential of decentralized data marketplaces as an emerging paradigm, poised to reshape business models and drive construction data towards a circular trajectory. Central to this transformation is understanding the merits of decentralized storage systems—essential for maintaining extensive records of city materials throughout their lifecycle. Complementing this, we introduce decentralized data marketplaces, platforms designed for seamless data exchange, fostering sustainable building designs and practices. In essence, this module’s key contribution lies in its capability to shift from a confined, centralized data realm to a broader, accessible decentralized landscape. In conclusion, by transitioning to a decentralized information landscape, we not only enhance transparency and data accessibility but also pave the way for a robust implementation of the circular economy in settlement systems, ensuring sustainability for future generations.
Decentralized Marketplace and Storage System
Stock Map / Singapore Case
Building material stock (BMS) is a crucial inventory of secondary resources which contain comprehensive information for analyzing the potential of material reuse and urban harvesting. Due to the complexity of urban building systems and the large number of buildings, obtaining information per each building is impractical. Observations reveal that data on urban buildings, especially for building materials, is very limited or rather inaccessible. Existing methods cannot be applied in data-scarce cities and are also challenging to update over time.
In Singapore, a synthetic approach named “parametric archetype” is proposed for the digital representation of BMS, combining distance measurement, which is a distance within dimensions describing building features, to match instance buildings dynamically to a “parametric archetype” with the highest similarity.
The CEP model quantify construction material yields, possibly using a BIM-driven decision tool that is currently under development, and it will identify efficient resource reuse. Meanwhile, to address the challenge of dealing with long lifecycles assets, the research on Temporary Works Circularity (TWC) will become our testing ground to validate Circular Economy methods within shorter lifecycles environments.
Stock Map / Zürich Case
The lack of data on existing buildings hinders efforts towards repair, reuse, and recycling of materials, which are crucial steps in mitigating the climate crisis. Manual acquisition of building data is complex and time-consuming. Combining street-level imagery with computer vision has the potential to revolutionize building materials documentation. We present a method to identify building facade materials using GIS and street view imagery using a fine-tuned image classification model. By harnessing open-access and non-proprietary data, our approach can be scaled to a global level.
Having an accurate inventory of building materials before demolition fosters the matching of reclaimable material supply with the prevailing demand, maximizing both environmental and economic gains. Here, you can explore the building facade material distribution for a subset of buildings in Zurich. Aggregated values of other building statistics from Stadt Zurich are also available for visualization. This tool lays the groundwork for our “resource cadastre”—a comprehensive inventory of building resources in a specific region.
Circular materials encompass a diverse range of solutions including bio-based, recycled, up-cycled, down-cycled, and re-used materials and building components. At the heart of this strategy lies the goal to reduce waste and sustainably manage our resources in the built environment. In some instances, the processes involved—particularly transportation and processing—may increase the carbon footprint, undermining the very environmental benefits we seek. Various challenges emerge with the rapid urbanisation we are experiencing. For instance, there’s a significant volume of excavation materials, primarily
earth, that must be transported out of the cities to be disposed, while we consume large amounts of primary materials, mainly sand and gravel to produce.
One regenerative approach involves the use of nature-based additives, in place of conventional products like cement or lime, to increase strength and water resistance on earthen materials. Another challenge comes from already produced industrial materials that are too often discard rather than reused. With ever increasing complexity of our technical systems, it becomes important to track the various components of such systems and identify circular routes to reuse them in new buildings. The identification of such valuable materials, mainly metals, for circular metal flows in the built environment can benefit from advanced
digital technique and machine learning to infer where and when these materials will be available. Circular materials, when produced thoughtfully, offer a promising path to sustainable urbanization not only by reducing waste but also by making more effective use of the resources available in the built environment.
Cycles and Districts / [CFC] Circular Future Cities
Principal Investigators: Prof. Dr Stefanie Hellweg, Assoc. Prof. Dr Rudi Stouffs
Co- Investigators: Dr Heiko Aydt, Asst Prof. Dr. Catherine De Wolf, Prof. Dr Guillaume Habert, Prof. Dr Daniel Hall, Dr Pieter Herthogs, Dr Aurel von Richthofen Researchers: David Bucher, Dr Meliha Honic, Wanyu Pei, Deepika Raghu, Dr Benjamin Sanchez Andrade, Dr Ranjith Soman, Francesco Tizzani, Shuyan Xiong
Module Coordinator: Dr Aleksandra Kim