Advances in technologies and the idea of incorporating technological solutions into buildings have made it possible to provide more comfortable and secure spaces for living or working. The term &ldquo / intelligent building&rdquo / is becoming very popular in terms of attaching prestige to a project and improving its desirability. However too many buildings are claimed to be intelligent and adaptive to change but, without an appropriate understanding of intelligent building concept and also capabilities of assessing an intelligent building, it is not possible to judge such claims. In view of the fact that truly intelligent buildings provide their occupants with efficient facilities and comfortable space, many experts and researchers have discussed the characteristics of intelligent buildings and come up with different definitions and assessment systems, but none agree with each other completely. The aim of this study was to evaluate intelligence in intelligent buildings and provide responsiveness clues in terms of system efficiency and user convenience to find out whether buildings claimed to be intelligent meet the intelligence requirements or not. v After conducting a literature survey to identify main intelligence characteristics, two buildings both claimed to be intelligent and able to provide occupants with healthy, secure and comfortable space, were selected as the case studies. The intelligent building principals and specific design considerations together with efficient system integration and system requirements were examined in the case studies. It was concluded that, even though case studies were admired in terms of holding commercial value and applying new technologies but there existed a lack in either employing or incorporating that technologies to meet desired responsiveness and dynamism which, are main attributes of intelligent buildings.

Social sustainability is one of the three foundations in the definition of sustainable development. Despite this, there is no common overarching definition of social sustainability. Climate and environmental issues are defined and complemented by global and national agreements. The lack of a common definition of social sustainability is a result of the susceptibility of the experience of social sustainability to the local context and subjective assessments.This study focuses on commercial property companies in Sweden and their strategic work with social sustainability as an integrated part of the business. Existing research indicates that tools for strategic assessment of social sustainability are required. The purpose of this study is to develop a social sustainability framework intended to help property developers and owners to assess and manage social sustainability aspects in a systematic way. By using the framework, the intention is to increase properties social and economic value, as well as the financing opportunities for property companies.The framework is developed through an iterative process inspired by a multi-methodological approach for system development. By analysing two existing sustainability evaluation methods in combination with existing research within the field, 63 aspects for social sustainability are identified and applied into this framework. The identified aspects are divided into five categories (health and well-being, safety and security, climate and ecology, dialogue and relation and flexibility, mobility, and equality). The developed framework is applied on two existing, commercial properties located in northern Sweden. To conclude, the framework can be a strategic instrument for socially sustainable property management and development in this specific region. Further development is suggested. / <p>2023-06-13</p>

As the architecture and construction industry places an increased emphasis on sustainability, building researchers are seeking more comprehensive methods to evaluate and reduce a building's environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has emerged as one of the most capable tools to aid in this assessment. Presently there are no guiding principles for the use of LCA in the building industry. This thesis aims to provide guidelines to help architects utilize LCA methodology as part of the design process. This study reviews a number of previously-completed whole-building LCA case-studies to understand different LCA scenarios of use in the building industry. In addition, a set of North American and international LCA tools were evaluated for their utility in different scenarios. The state of research was assessed to find answers to some critical issues concerning LCA. Based on these analyses, a number of scenarios of use of LCA were identified and a set of guidelines was proposed to conduct LCA for buildings. It was concluded that the present use of LCA is limited due to limited tool capabilities, deficient databases and lack of a building-specific methodology. The study recognizes these limitations and recommends specific research opportunities for future researchers. However, it is concluded that approximate LCA results obtained from the tools available today can be useful in informing design-decisions, keeping in mind the lack of precision in the results.

<p>    </p> <p>Image data remains an important tool for post-event building assessment and documentation. After each natural hazard event, significant efforts are made by teams of engineers to visit the affected regions and collect useful image data. In general, a global positioning system (GPS) can provide useful spatial information for localizing image data. However, it is challenging to collect such information when images are captured in places where GPS signals are weak or interrupted, such as the indoor spaces of buildings. An inability to document the images’ locations would hinder the analysis, organization, and documentation of these images as they lack sufficient spatial context. This problem becomes more urgent to solve for the inspection mission covering a large area, like a community. To address this issue, the objective of this research is to generate a tool to automatically process the image data collected during such a mission and provide the location of each image. Towards this goal, the following tasks are performed. First, I develop a methodology to localize images and link them to locations on a structural drawing (Task 1). Second, this methodology is extended to be able to process data collected from a large scale area, and perform indoor localization for images collected on each of the indoor floors of each individual building (Task 2). Third, I develop an automated technique to render the damage condition decision of buildings by fusing the image data collected within (Task 3). The methods developed through each task have been evaluated with data collected from real world buildings. This research may also lead to automated assessment of buildings over a large scale area. </p>

This thesis deals with the exploration and evaluation of historic masonry building. The researched building was built in the 20th 20th century. Is located in the premises of the Philosophical Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno. During preparation for the planned modernization of the survey was conducted several objects of the university complex. In this work, however, we consider only the building named "C". It will be processed by selected diagnostic method. The findings will then serve as a basis for static analysis and follow-up activities associated with modernization.

Samtidigt som debatten kring jordens klimatförändring är i full gång har intresset för att miljöcertifiera byggnader vuxit oerhört. För fastighetsägare är det en möjlighet att bevisa för sina hyresgäster och köpare att byggnaden är hållbar. Är en byggnad miljöcertifierad har en oberoende part intygat att den uppfyller en nivå av hållbarhet som bestäms utifrån standardiserade kriterier. Fastighetsägaren kan alltså använda certifikatet i marknadsföringssyfte. Den här studien undersökte om en byggnad som är byggnadsminnesförklarad kan miljöcertifieras med Miljöbyggnad. Målet var att hitta kostnadseffektiva lösningar för att uppfylla de miljöcertifieringskriterier som eventuellt inte uppfylls idag. Miljöbyggnad har i dagsläget inga specifika kriterier för kulturhistoriskt värdefulla byggnader, så bedömningen har skett mot de allmänna kriterierna. Vid certifiering med Miljöbyggnad sker en granskning utifrån energi-, inomhusmiljö- och materialrelaterade kriterier. Verktyget mäter alltså inte bara byggnadens hållbarhet i fråga om växthusgasutsläpp utan även i hänseende till hälsan och välbefinnandet hos personerna som vistas i byggnaden. Byggnaden som har utvärderats är Kungliga Tekniska Högskolans studenters kårhus. Den byggnadsminnesförklarades 2012 på grund av sin utpräglade och välbevarade funktionalistiska utformning. Byggd 1930 uppfördes den mitt under en brytningstid när funktionalismen var på intåg i Sverige. I studien har alla kriterier som krävs för en miljöcertifiering gåtts igenom och stämts av mot hur byggnaden ligger till idag. Särskild fokus har lagts på Miljöbyggnads energirelaterade kriterier. För att minska energianvändningen har energieffektiviseringsåtgärder tagits fram som ger en besparing på hundratusentals kronor per år. Energieffektiviseringsåtgärderna består av bättre drift av ventilationen samt byte till effektivare belysning. Energiberäkningsprogrammet DesignBuilder har använts för att utvärdera energieffektiviseringsåtgärderna samt för att simulera termisk komfort och dagsljusinsläpp. Energikällornas hållbarhet vid olika miljöval på elhandelsavtalet och om det finns möjlighet att installera solskydd för fönstren har också undersökts. Hindret för en certifiering är att byggnaden åtminstone behöver uppfylla myndighetskrav på tillgång till dagsljus. Det finns också osäkerheter som har att göra med om energieffektiviseringsåtgärderna minskar energianvändningen så mycket som krävs för en certifiering. För övrigt finns goda förutsättningar för en miljöcertifiering. / Climate change is widely discussed these days, and the interest in environmental assessment for buildings has increased enormously. For landlords and house-owners, it brings the possibility to prove to their tenants and customers that their buildings are sustainable. A building with an environmental assessment certificate is assured by an independent inspector to fulfill a certain level of sustainability that is specified by standardized criteria. The landlords can subsequently use the certificate for advertising. This study investigated if a listed historic building can be certified according to the Swedish environmental assessment method Miljöbyggnad. The objective was to find cost effective ways to meet those criteria for environmental assessment that are not fulfilled today. Miljöbyggnad has no specific set of criteria for historical buildings today, so the investigation has been performed using the general criteria. For a certification with Miljöbyggnad, an audit from energy, indoor environment and material point of view is performed. Thus, the assessment method does not only measure sustainability regarding greenhouse gas emissions, but also concerning well-being of the occupants of the building. The examined building is the student union house of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The building was listed in 2012 due to its pronounced and well preserved functionalistic design. Built 1930, it was raised during the time when the functionalism was introduced in Sweden. In the study, all criteria for the environmental assessment have been evaluated for the current situation of the building. The energy related criteria has been emphasized. In order to decrease the energy use, measures for improving the energy efficiency has been found, that will save several hundred thousand SEK per year. The measures consist of improved operation of the ventilation system and retrofitted lighting for better efficacy. The energy calculation program DesignBuilder has been used to evaluate the energy efficiency measures and to simulate thermal comfort and daylighting. The sustainability of the energy sources for different environmental options for the electricity contract and the possibility of installing shadings for the windows have been investigated as well. The main difficulty for a certification is that the building has to fulfill building codes for daylighting. There are also uncertainties regarding the energy efficiency measures being able to decrease the energy use sufficiently for a certification. Other than that, the prospects are good for a certification.

The aim of this master´s thesis was design and analysis of a steel supporting structure of a building for business and administration purposes in Ostrava. It includes an assessment of the main load-bearing construction elements and the selected connections. The thesis also contains the design documentation of the building and compares two different variants of the steel construction design.

The master thesis deals with measures to reduce energy performance of grocery store building. Model of the grocery store is evaluated according to a recommended energy values specified by Czech standards and according to the real values of the actual consumption. These values are compared. Final building analysis for a proposal measures to reduce energy consumption is based on the invoices of the real consumption and on the experimental assignments. Experimental measurements are the Blower door test of the tightness of the building envelope, the measures with the thermovision camera and the measuring of the illumination intensity. The most efficient proposal is extended to the whole model network of the food shops in the Czech Republic.