Hospital construction and renovation activities are an ever-constant phenomenon in healthcare facilities, causing dust contamination and possible dispersal of fungal spores. We reviewed fungal ...outbreaks that occurred during construction and renovation over the last 4 decades as well as current infection prevention strategies and control measures. Fungal outbreaks still occur in healthcare settings, especially among patients with hematological malignancies and those who are immunocompromised. The causative pathogens of these outbreaks were usually Aspergillus species, but Zygomycetes and other fungi were occasionally reported. Aspergillus most commonly caused pulmonary infection. The overall mortality of construction/renovation-associated fungal infection was approximately 50%. The minimal concentration of fungal spores by air sampling for acquisition of fungal infections remains to be determined. Performing infection control risk assessments and implementing the recommended control measures is essential to prevent healthcare-associated fungal outbreaks during construction and renovation.
Holistic housing renovations combine physical housing improvements with social and socioeconomic interventions (e.g. referral to social services, debt counselling, involvement in decision-making, ...promoting social cohesion). In a deprived neighbourhood in Utrecht, the Netherlands, this paper examined residents' and professionals' experiences, ideas, and perceptions regarding holistic housing renovation, its health effects, and underlying mechanisms explaining those effects.
Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 social housing residents exposed to holistic housing renovation, and 12 professionals involved in either the physical renovation or social interventions implemented. Residents were interviewed in various renovation stages (before, during, after renovation). Transcripts were deductively and inductively coded using qualitative software.
Residents experienced and professionals acknowledged renovation stress caused by nuisance from construction work (noise, dust), having to move stuff around, and temporary moving; lack of information and control; and perceived violation of privacy. Involvement in design choices was appreciated, and mental health improvement was expected on the long term due to improved housing quality and visual amenity benefits. Social contact between residents increased as the renovation became topic for small talk. Few comments were made regarding physical health effects. The interviews revealed a certain amount of distrust in and dissatisfaction with the housing corporation, construction company, and other authorities.
Renovation stress, aggravated by lack of information and poor accessibility of housing corporation and construction company, negatively affects mental health and sense of control. Potential stress relievers are practical help with packing and moving furniture, and increased predictability by good and targeted communication. Social interventions can best be offered after renovation, when residents live in their renovated apartment and the nuisance and stress from the renovation is behind them. Social partners can use the period leading up to the renovation to show their faces, offer practical help to reduce renovation stress, and increase residents' trust in their organization and authorities in general. This might also contribute to residents' willingness to accept help with problems in the social domain after renovation.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The building stock accounts for a significant portion of worldwide energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. While the majority of the existing building stock has poor energy performance, deep ...renovation efforts are stymied by a wide range of human, technological, organisational and external environment factors across the value chain. A key challenge is integrating appropriate human resources, materials, fabrication, information and automation systems and knowledge management in a proper manner to achieve the required outcomes and meet the relevant regulatory standards, while satisfying a wide range of stakeholders with differing, often conflicting, motivations. RINNO is a Horizon 2020 project that aims to deliver a set of processes that, when working together, provide a system, repository, marketplace and enabling workflow process for managing deep renovation projects from inception to implementation. This paper presents a roadmap for an open renovation platform for managing and delivering deep renovation projects for residential buildings based on seven design principles. We illustrate a preliminary stepwise framework for applying the platform across the full-lifecycle of a deep renovation project. Based on this work, RINNO will develop a new open renovation software platform that will be implemented and evaluated at four pilot sites with varying construction, regulatory, market and climate contexts.
•Different renovation intervention levels are evaluated.•The technoeconomic feasibility by itself does not explain the actual renovation rates.•Existing social, material and legal barriers are key ...for a comprehensive analysis.•Measures should be taken to boost district/building level interventions.
Building is one of the main sectors in which significant energy savings can be achieved with a consequent reduction in emissions. This paper assesses the large-scale renovation of buildings, exploring the quantitative and qualitative factors that determine their replicability potential from three different perspectives, namely dwelling, building and district intervention level. Different passive and active measures are assessed, covering energy saving measures, the improvement of energy supply systems and the integration of renewable energy sources. Different scenarios are defined for each intervention level, which are evaluated using the methodology developed in the IEA-EBC Annex 75 project. The methodology is applied to a residential district located in Bilbao (Northern Spain). The analysis is based on the results obtained from the simulation of 41 combinations of different renovation options, obtained by simulation in the Design Builder software. The assessment is carried out from the evaluation of different key performance factors, including annualised cost and annual primary energy consumption, as well as the CAPEX and OPEX requirements. The results show that energy renovation of buildings offers a great opportunity for energy reduction at affordable investment costs, obtaining the cost optimal values when the intervention focus on the energy system and reaching net NRPE values close to zero when the intervention is carried out in a comprehensive way, considering energy systems and thermal improvement of the envelope. Additionally, the different energy reduction scenarios show that, while interventions at district level offer the greatest potential for minimising annual costs and primary energy consumption levels, intervening at building level offers only slightly worse results. However, there are other issues which can better explain the current low rate of renovation works in the urban environment. Thus, if the additional existing social, material and legal barriers and constraints are included in the analysis, it becomes clear why renovation from a district perspective is not actually leading the race. Given this situation, some measures and policies are proposed to realise the true potential of large-scale building renovation.
The building sector is one of the key consumers of energy worldwide. Thus, the retrofitting of existing buildings provides excellent opportunities for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas ...emissions. This paper presents a critical review of the research undertaken on housing retrofits and discusses the approaches driving the assessment of energy-efficiency measures. It is clear from the existing literature that many retrofitting strategies are quite similar in their approaches, the most common of these being passive strategies such as insulation of the envelope, replacement of windows, and air sealing. However, the assessment methodologies differ broadly and widely, which restricts a comparison of the results across various studies. This current state of the art review highlights the need to apply a life cycle approach in order to find the optimal retrofitting solutions, and to identify the real improvement potential of housing renovation. Life cycle assessment and life cycle cost methodologies have been analyzed by discussing the existing limitations, which can be mitigated by sensitivity analysis. Finally, whilst social impacts were addressed in a few studies, life cycle social assessment was not conducted in any of the papers reviewed.
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•Evaluation methods as well as energy saving measures on housing renovation are described.•Environmental, economic and multi-criteria assessment methodologies are compared.•Key methodological aspects on sustainability assessment methods used in housing renovation are identified and analyzed.•A strong need for methodological harmonization considering environmental, economic and social impacts is found.
Future building renovations must rely on a holistic perspective in relation to sustainability. This paper presents a Decision Support Systems (DSS) that can be used by architects and engineering ...consultants to generate and evaluate the sustainability of renovation scenarios in a holistic manner during the early design stage of renovation projects. Firstly, this paper discusses both the notion of a sustainable renovation, together with various renovation approaches, towards the appreciation of the developing DSS for the generation of holistic scenarios. Secondly, it provides details about the mechanism and types of Multiple Criteria Decision Making methods to be exploited in the main body of the DSS. As such, a hybrid approach including a search algorithm with the Genetic Algorithm is used to combine and develop countless optimal scenarios. The performance of the generated scenarios is simulated and evaluated in terms criteria for Energy Consumption, Investment Cost, and Thermal Indoor Comfort. The trade-off between the criteria is addressed using the Pareto-front approach, and subsequently, the optimal scenarios are determined and selected using MCDM-based rating methods. The outcome is verified discussing a case study about an actual recently renovated dwelling and the top ranked generated scenarios using the DSS in this paper.
Building renovation must be attractive and profitable regarding sustainability criteria to be a competitive alternative to demolishment and construction of new buildings. This study presents the ...global warming potential related life cycle assessment and net present value life cycle costing of three hybrid-timber building renovation and extension systems. The three systems have been developed for three common building types in the Republic of Korea: residential high-rise (cross-laminated timber system), multi-use (glue-laminated and timber frame system), and residential low-rise (steel and timber frame system). The global warming potential of the renovation systems’ materials and their net present value has been calculated with a parametric design system that facilitates the streamlined calculation of multiple construction options and the resulting environmental and economic impacts. The results demonstrate that the three systems achieve negative global warming potential (apartment: −4.74 kgCO2/m2, mixed-use −0.74 kgCO2/m2, multi-unit: −0.28 kgCO2/m2). Positive net present value can be achieved by selling or renting additional useable floor space created through building extension and renovation, resulting in economically and ecologically profitable alternatives to new construction. The parametric calculation system facilitates integrated economic and ecologic cost assessment and evaluation and allows for multiple scenario comparisons.
•Life Cycle Assessment and Costing of 3 building extension and renovation systems.•Introduction of a parametric economic and environmental cost assessment system.•50 years life cycle assessment period & materials with minimized CO2-eq emissions.•All systems achieve negative CO2-eq emissions and positive Net Present Values.•Renewable materials & building extensions are crucial to achieve positive results.
Reaching environmental targets set by the European Union (EU) requires a constant renovation of the existing building stock to nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) in a cost-optimal manner. Studies ...show that the renovation rate of the existing building stock is more than two times less than what is necessary to reach the targets. Furthermore, the majority of performed renovations across the EU reach just a small amount of energy savings, whereas NZEB renovations are rarely achieved. This paper proposes a methodology for the evaluation of renovation measures, aiming to provide decision support related to the selection of what to renovate and to what extent. The proposed method is rooted in the well-established cost-optimal methodology, yet it suggests a pre-step to package evaluation. This is done by means of a simplified cost-effective parameter (CEP), linking cost, lifetime, and energy savings. The methodology is demonstrated using a case study building in Denmark. The results show that the CEP provides good grounds for the compilation of single actions to packages. Further developments could focus on the sensitivity of the model inputs and integration of additional evaluation parameters to cost, such as environmental, architectural, comfort, risk, etc.
Residential energy-related renovations have a high potential to reduce emissions. However, organizing such renovation is riddled with high transaction costs. In response, scholars and policymakers ...(e.g., European Commission) have advocated the One-Stop-Shop (OSS) concept to simplify house owners' access to complex renovation solution, but adoption of the concept remains slow. So far, research has focused on the positive impact of OSS at the end customer interface, paying less attention to the governance challenges among supply-side actors. We perform abductive research that combines insights from 45 supply-side actor interviews with transaction cost economics and resource-based theory toward developing a conceptual framework that outlines 15 organizational conditions for supply-side actors’ uptake of the OSS model. Empirically, we find that supply-side organizations are, at this point, reluctant to take up governance of the OSS model. The reported reasons for this vary between different classes of organizations, but overall align well with the organizational conditions outlined in transaction cost economics and resource-based theory. We propose policy interventions to tackle these shortcomings and to structurally support the supply-side of the renovation market in developing the relevant conditions for OSS uptake.
•Supply-side actors lag adoption of one-stop shop concept for residential renovation.•Lagging adoption is explained by transaction-cost economics and resource-based theory.•Large construction companies or engineering consultants could boost OSS adoption.•Supply-side oriented support schemes are important to increase adoption.
Energy performance of buildings directive sets a goal to achieve a highly energy efficient and decarbonised building stock by 2050. In this study, a pilot nZEB (nearly zero energy building) ...renovation of an existing apartment building is analysed. nZEB criteria of new apartment buildings was set as the energy performance target in designing renovation solutions. The whole building envelope was additionally insulated with prefabricated modular panels and new service systems were installed. Measured energy consumption after the renovation showed that the pilot building fulfilled the minimum energy performance requirements for new apartment buildings, but nZEB target was not achieved. Measured heating energy consumption is 1.6 times higher (mainly because of the higher indoor temperature, supply air temperature, window airing, and higher ventilation airflow rates which methodology for heating energy calculations are not taken into account) and measured energy need for DHW is 4.4 times higher (mainly because of the real use profiles as well unexpected performance of solar collector and sewerage heat recovery system) than expected in building design. Results show that in renovation projects (also in new projects), occupant behaviour and the real use of building should be used as more realistic input parameters for designing energy performance. Distribution and circulation losses of air handling units, heating coils and DHW (domestic hot water) systems should be taken into account in the national energy calculation methodologies as service system heat losses can be a significant part of energy consumption at nZEB levels. If the renovated building would be used according to design methodology, the nZEB target can be achieved.
•Performance gap between measured and designed primary energy consumption is 34%.•Heating energy consumption increase 29% is related with user behaviour.•Heat losses of DHW circulation system are 20% from DHW energy use.•DHW circulation losses should include to primary energy calculation.
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