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Retrofitting of existing buildings offers significant opportunities to reduce global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is considered as one of the main approaches to achieve sustainability in the built environment at a relatively low cost. Although there is a wide range of retrofitting technologies available, methods to identify the most costeffective measures for each project remain a major technical challenge. Numerous projects have been developed worldwide to face this challenge with different approaches; however, many of the tools meet only local objectives, which is why they are unknown in the international arena, showing a limited transfer of knowledge. This review organizes the results under three categories: renovation assessment, financial assessment, and transfer of knowledge. The tools focusing on promoting the renovation of buildings differ in the type of user, for example, the owners, politicians, or investors. The tools dealing with financial assessment suggest different methods to evaluate and calculate the cost savings, construction costs, and return forecasts through retrofit interventions. Other tools comply with the policies that seek to register, evaluate, and characterize the existing buildings. This review provides researchers, construction professionals, and politicians with a better understanding of the advances made to effectively design building retrofitting measures and promote energy conservation as well as the assessment of the building stock for the development of policies. The review shows that many tools have the potential of joining their capabilities, which can create many opportunities for innovation in the retrofitting area. ; publishedVersion

Abstract. Plinian and subplinian volcanic eruptions can be accompanied by tephra falls which may last hours or days, posing threats to people, buildings and economic activity. Numerous historical examples exist of tephra damage and tephra casualties. The mechanisms and consequences of roof collapse from static tephra load are an important area of tephra damage requiring more research. This paper contributes to this work by estimating the structural vulnerability of buildings to tephra load based on both analytical studies and observed damage. New studies are presented of roof strengths in the area around Mt. Vesuvius in southern Italy and of field surveys undertaken in other European volcanic locations to assess building vulnerability to tephra fall. The results are a proposed set of new European tephra fall roof vulnerability curves in areas potentially threatened by explosive volcanic eruptions along with comments on the human casualty implications of roof collapse under tephra loading. Some mitigation recommendations are provided.

Abstract. This study evaluates seismic capacity of the unreinforced masonry buildings with the selected template designs constructed per pre-modern code in Albania considering nonlinear behaviour of masonry. Three residential buildings with template designs were selected to represent an important percentage of residential buildings in medium-size cities located in seismic regions of Albania. Selection of template designed buildings and material properties were based on archive and site survey in several cities of Albania. Capacity curves of investigated buildings were determined by pushover analyses conducted in two principal directions. The seismic performances of these buildings have been determined for various earthquake levels. Seismic capacity evaluation was carried out in accordance with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) 440 guidelines. Reasons for building damages in past earthquakes are examined using the results of capacity assessment of investigated buildings. It is concluded that of the residential buildings with the template design, with the exception of one, are far from satisfying required performance criteria. Furthermore, deficiencies and possible solutions to improve the capacity of investigated buildings are discussed.

To promote energy efficiency for residential buildings in Hong Kong, a research has been conducted to investigate the characteristics of energy consumption in the residential buildings and develop a suitable energy labelling system for assessing the building energy performance. The aims of the research are to review worldwide experience, study the feasibility of establishing building energy labels in Hong Kong, and evaluate the key factors for design and implementation of the building energy labels. The experience in Europe, North America, Australia, Singapore and China has been studied. It is found that appliance energy labels are widely used in many countries; they are effective policy instruments to help increase awareness and overcome the market barriers. Some countries have extended them and developed energy labels for buildings. In Europe, with the launch of the European Union (EU) Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings, energy certificates and labels are being set up to grade buildings in terms of energy performance. Similar approach is being taken by USA, mainland China and other countries. The characteristics of energy consumption of typical residential buildings in Hong Kong have been analyzed. An energy equation for assessing energy consumption of high-rise residential buildings has been established by building energy simulation method and practical design assessment. The final form of the energy equation includes six major factors, namely, HVAC coefficient of performance, window shading, lighting power density, hot water intensity, other appliance intensity and refrigerator energy. ; postprint

Rapid expansion of solar thermal energy for increasing energy efficiency of buildings has been adopted in short/medium and long-term energy strategies of EU countries. Within this context, the overall objective of this work is to develop an innovative high performance and cost effective hybrid solar heat and power system. The initial application is to be implemented in individual dwellings and small business residential buildings for onsite electricity and heat generation using solar thermal energy. It is estimated that the proposed technology will deliver 60% of domestic energy requirements and provide 20% reduction in energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions compared to the best existing low carbon energy technologies. The aim of this study consists in performing a comparative analysis of the different building typologies, which can host this technology, and their energy demands for heating and domestic hot water, as well as their CO2 emissions. ; This study has received funding from Eurepean Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 723596 (Innova MicroSolar) and Nº 657466 (INPATH-TES). The work is partially funded by the Sapnish government ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER) and ENE2015-64117-C5-3-R (MINECO/FEDER). GREA is certified agent TECNIO in the cathegory of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. The authors would like to thanks the Calatan Governmnet for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2014 SGR 123). Alvaro de Gracia would like to thanks Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014-19940.

Project delivery team integration generally involves early involvement of general contractors and key specialty contractors in the design process. Team integration has been found to improve an owner's probability of success. However, during difficult economic times, owners can forego early team involvement and move toward low bid procurement to take advantage of competitive markets. This study explores the performance of integrated teams in the Spanish multifamily building construction market in light of the 2007 financial crisis. After conducting structured interviews of 31 residential building projects with the owner and main contractor of each one of them, this study identified eight projects for in-depth case studies. These eight case studies represented the best performing, worst performing, and atypical cases. The results show that Spanish building owners experience higher success by developing integrated teams. This integration begins with how the owner organizes the team for success (i.e., integrated builder services, qualifications-based procurement, and prior experience) and promotes integration throughout the project process (i.e., timeliness of communications, shared commitment to goals, and development of team chemistry). © 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers. ; The authors are indebted to all the participants in this research. It was partially supported by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte) that funded a scholarship for the first author at the University of Colorado-Boulder (reference PRX12/00066). ; Pellicer Armiñana, E.; Sanz Benlloch, MA.; Esmaeili, B.; Molenaar, KR. (2016). Exploration of Team Integration in Spanish Multifamily Residential Building Construction. Journal of Management in Engineering. 32:05016012-1-05016012-11. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000438 ; S ; 05016012-1 ; 05016012-11 ; 32

This paper describes a segment of research conducted within the project PON 04a2_E Smart Energy Master for the energetic government of the territory conducted by the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environment Engineering, University of Naples "Federico II". In particular, this article is part of the study carried out for the definition of the comprehension/interpretation model that correlates buildings, city's activities and users' behaviour in order to promote energy savings. In detail, this segment of the research wants to define the residential variables to be used in the model. For this purpose a knowledge framework at international level has been defined, to estimate the energy requirements of residential buildings and the identification of a set of parameters, whose variation has a significant influence on the energy consumption of residential buildings.

This paper describes a segment of research conducted within the project PON 04a2_E Smart Energy Master for the energetic government of the territory conducted by the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environment Engineering, University of Naples "Federico II". In particular, this article is part of the study carried out for the definition of the comprehension/interpretation model that correlates buildings, city's activities and users' behaviour in order to promote energy savings. In detail, this segment of the research wants to define the residential variables to be used in the model. For this purpose a knowledge framework at international level has been defined, to estimate the energy requirements of residential buildings and the identification of a set of parameters, whose variation has a significant influence on the energy consumption of residential buildings.

Understanding the development of the trends in the ownership of different appliances in a historic context in various countries of the world can not only provide important insights for understanding the dynamics of adoption of different appliances, but can also help with foresight: how the future may develop for these or other, new appliances on the market. Although available literature in household appliances energy consumption, energy management and energy efficiency has seen some advances, there is a clear lack in the literature on household appliance ownership. In this paper, historic data is gathered and analysed for several groups of appliance types (white appliances, brown appliances and small appliances) for 12 countries representing four continents, when available since 1970 to date. Countries representing different parts of the world were selected to present an overview on household appliances ownership and energy consumption. One of the first conclusions of the study is that there is little or no information in many countries from South America, Africa or South Asia. Refrigerators, freezers and washing machines ownership are an example of most other white goods. Brown goods appeared in the market at very different time, depending on each one (from the 70s to the late 90s) and their ownership growth is much higher than for the previous ones. Most of small line appliances ownership has not reached saturation yet. ; The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015–64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER)). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group GREA and DIOPMA (2014 SGR 123 and 2014 SGR 1543, respectively). GREA and DIOPMA are certified agents TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. Dr. Camila Barreneche would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014–22886.

Retrofitting of existing buildings offers significant opportunities to reduce global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is considered as one of the main approaches to achieve sustainability in the built environment at a relatively low cost. Although there is a wide range of retrofitting technologies available, methods to identify the most cost-effective measures for each project remain a major technical challenge. Numerous projects have been developed worldwide to face this challenge with different approaches; however, many of the tools meet only local objectives, which is why they are unknown in the international arena, showing a limited transfer of knowledge. This review organizes the results under three categories: renovation assessment, financial assessment, and transfer of knowledge. The tools focusing on promoting the renovation of buildings differ in the type of user, for example, the owners, politicians, or investors. The tools dealing with financial assessment suggest different methods to evaluate and calculate the cost savings, construction costs, and return forecasts through retrofit interventions. Other tools comply with the policies that seek to register, evaluate, and characterize the existing buildings. This review provides researchers, construction professionals, and politicians with a better understanding of the advances made to effectively design building retrofitting measures and promote energy conservation as well as the assessment of the building stock for the development of policies. The review shows that many tools have the potential of joining their capabilities, which can create many opportunities for innovation in the retrofitting area.

Promoting the improvement of the overall energy performance of buildings is a relevant part of the European climate action and the Roadmap for moving towards a competitive low carbon economy in 2050, with an expectation of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by around 90% when compared to 1990 values, in the area of the built environment. The recast of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) introduced the goal of nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) for all new buildings from January 1st, 2021 and plans should be drawn to stimulate the transformation of existing buildings that are refurbished into the same concept. EPBD also requires that all European Member States must ensure that the minimum energy performance requirements for buildings are set to achieve optimal levels, i.e. the energy performance levels that lead to the minimum cost during the life cycle. Therefore, Cost Optimality and nZEB are two fundamental concepts within the current European Union policy related to the energy performance of buildings and consequently related to climate change mitigation and non-renewable resources consumption, with Cost Optimality mainly focused on costs and nZEB focused on low energy consumption levels and on site renewables harvesting. In this context, this paper, using two characteristic buildings of the Portuguese residential building stock, aims at presenting the results that emerged from the analysis and identification of the most cost-effective packages of renovation measures needed to adapt existing buildings to zero energy balance and comparing them with those resulting from the calculation of cost-optimal levels.The investigation of the trade-offs between a renovation towards zero energy balance and a cost optimal renovation without energy use restrictions is relevant to provide clues to the development of national plans for increasing the number of nZEB and to provide appropriate financing and other instruments to catalyze this ...

Rooftop solar photovoltaic(PV) installation in India have increased in lastdecade because of the flat 40 percent subsidy extended for rooftop solarPV systems (3 kWp and below) by the Indian government under the solarrooftop scheme. From the residential building owner's perspective, solar PVis competitive when it can produce electricity at a cost less than or equalgrid electricity price, a condition referred as "grid parity". For assessing gridparity of 3 kWp and 2 kWp residential solar PV system, 15 states capitaland 19 major cities were considered for the RET screen simulation by usingsolar isolation, utility grid tariff, system cost and other economic parameters.3 kWp and 2 kWp rooftop solar PV with and without subsidy scenarioswere considered for simulation using RETscreen software. We estimate thatwithout subsidy no state could achieve grid parity for 2kWp rooftop solarPV plant. However with 3 kWp rooftop solar PV plant only 5 states couldachieve grid parity without subsidy and with government subsidy number ofstates increased to 7, yet wide spread parity for residential rooftop solar PV isstill not achieved. We find that high installation costs, subsidized utility grid supply to low energy consumer and financing rates are major barriers to gridparity