1

Abstract

Addressing climate change is one of the key technological challenges of the present and

the near future. With about a half of the energy being used in the built environment and

with a huge proportion being used by the transportation sector, the construction

industry will be a very important player. The paper presents the general context of the

climate change discussion. It identifies construction industry as a double winner in this

process, potentially benefiting both from the changes in nature as well as from

governments' measures. There are many things construction industry can accomplish

without much additional research, even more, however, if it moves beyond the current

state of the art, particularly in building automation and the use of ICT throughout the

building's life cycle. The paper concludes by identifying the emerging research and

development agenda in the field constriction informatics.

Keywords: climate change, information technology in construction, research agenda.

1 Introduction

Researchers have been pointing to the gradual warming of the planet since the late

1980s [1] and most have attributed it to increased concentration of greenhouse gasses

resulting from human burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil; Thus the name

"anthropogenic global warming" (AGW). The process caught political attention in the

late 1990s when a global agreement called the Kyoto protocol [2] was signed by many

but not all industrial powers. A series of extremely warm summers in the northern

hemisphere as well as continued scientific [3] and public relations activity (such as the

Inconvenient Truth movie) lead to renewed interest, at least in Europe.

Citation: Ž. Turk, "Construction Information Technology Research: Climate Change Agenda", invited

paper in B.H.V. Topping, L.F. Costa Neves, R.C. Barros, (Editors), "Trends in Civil and Structural

Engineering Computing", Saxe-Coburg Publications, Computational Science, Engineering & Technology

Series, ISSN 1759-3158; Stirlingshire, UK, Chapter 19, pp 413-423, 2009. doi:10.4203/csets.22.19

Construction IT Research -

Climate Change Agenda1

Ž. Turk

Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering,

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

&

Secretariat of the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe,

Brussels, Belgium.

2

In 2007 the EU agreed on the so called 5x20 plan: By 2020 unilaterally reduce

greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, reduce energy consumption in general by 20% and

obtain 20% of the energy from renewable sources. With an international agreement

reached, the greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced even more ambitiously -

down to 30%.

Many studies suggest that in order to stabilise the temperatures not higher than

about 2C over average values, the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions should

be between 50 and 95% by the year 2050 [4]. Given the fact that 80% of the global

energy today comes from fossil fuels [5], it is clear that this calls for an industrial and

technological revolution that would totally change our current ways of generating and

using energy which some call the third industrial revolution [6].

Although the scientific consensus about the AGW is quite strong, the actual

relation between the CO2 concentration and temperature is still being investigated [7].

Other good reasons to proceed with reduction of GHG emissions and energy

efficiency also include the price of fossil fuels and reliability of delivery. The EU is

importing around 55% of its primary energy. Another argument is that even if the

chances of a major climate disaster happening is low, the overall risk is still high given

what is at stake, and that "the price of inaction is greater than the price of action" [4]. It

is hoped that in December 2009 in Copenhagen, a post Kyoto agreement would be

reached that would be a basis for a serious step towards drastic reduction of the use of

energy in general and the use of fossil fuels in particular.

The coming industrial revolution will be profound. The key topic of this paper is

how can the research and development in construction and particularly in the use of

information and communication technology (ICT) in construction contribute to this

effort.

2 Responses to climate change

The two responses are adaptation to changes (in nature as well as in the political and

business environments) and mitigation. Given the future scenarios both will need to

take place.

2.1 Adaptation to nature

Adaptation means adapting our societies to warmer climates, potentially higher sea

levels and more violent weather events. While there is little scientific consensus what

extreme events are results of climate changes (such as hurricanes, tornados, floods,

storms) generally warmer climate is associated with more extreme events. The

construction industry will need to respond by, for example, re-evaluating design loads

related to wind, flood water occurrence levels, insulation against warm weather and the

expected future sea levels. Much of the infrastructure will need to be adapted or

upgraded and many building practices reconsidered.

2.2 Mitigation

3

Mitigation essentially means reducing the CO2 emissions. A widely cited study by

McKinsey (Fig.1) shows the costs related to doing so. The vertical dimension of each of

the areas in the diagram is the cost of reduction. Some technologies (on the left of the

diagram) have a negative cost, meaning, they save money to the investor. Some cost

less (centre part) some more (far right of the diagram). The horizontal dimension is the

abetment potential - how many million tons of CO2 can one or other technology save.

As one can see, the total potential is in line with the 20-20-20 targets and for about one

third of the CO2 the price is negative.

The diagram provides a very good rule of thumb for the legislators as to have to

move the industry and the citizens downwards the reduction of the CO2 emissions.

Solutions on the left hand side of the diagram are likely to be enforced through

standards and legislation. For example by prescribing better insulation properties

of the building envelope of fuel efficiency of cars. In the field of construction, the

EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) has been adopted in 2003

and is being used since 2006. Energy efficiency in buildings is also addressed in

the Boiler Directive (92/42/EEC), the Construction Products Directive

(89/106/EEC) and the buildings provisions in the SAVE Directive 93/76/EEC).

The middle part of the diagram includes technologies that can be assisted by

providing tax breaks and subventions for their use, such as the feed-in tariffs for

renewable electricity power.

Technology no the far right are expensive and research is needed to make them

cheaper.

legislation,

standards

promotion,

advertising

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

-10

-100

-20

-30

-60

-40

-70

-80

-90

-50

Ab

atem

ent

cost

in €

per

tC

O2e

Global GHG abatement cost curve beyond business-as-usual – 2030

Lighting – switch incandescent to LED (residential)

Cropland nutrient management

Tillage and residue mgmt

1st generation biofuels

Clinker substitution by fly ash

Electricity from landfill gas

Small hydro

Reduced slash and burn agriculture conversion

Reduced pastureland conversion

Grassland management

Organic soil restoration

Pastureland afforestation

Nuclear

Degraded forest reforestationReduced intensive

agriculture conversion

Coal CCS new build

Iron and steel CCS new build

Motor systems efficiency

Rice management

Cars full hybrid

Gas plant CCS retrofit

Solar PV

Waste recycling

High penetration wind

Low penetration wind

Residential electronics

Residential appliances

Retrofit residential HVAC

Insulation retrofit (commercial)

Power plant biomass co-firing

Geothermal

Coal CCS retrofit

Degraded land restoration

Abatement potential

in GtCO2e per year

Solar CSP

Building efficiency new build

2nd generation bio-fuels

Efficiency improvements other industry

Insulation retrofit (residential)

Cars plug-in hybrid

SOURCE: Global GHG Abatement Cost Curve v2.0

385 10 15 20 25 30 35

research and

development

tax and other

financial incentives

policy measures Figure 1: Technology map for reduction of CO2.

4

In addition to the enforcement of the sustainable practices, habits of the people and their

values will play an increasing role [8]. To exercise these beliefs the citizens need

information on the sustainability performance of the products. In the filed of

construction, the so called Energy Performance Certificate carries the information about

the energy performance of a building in a very similar way as household appliances are

rated from A to G. Some EU member states have also implemented a "Display Energy

Certificate" that publicly displays the energy use of a building and calls for a report

outlining measures to improve.

2.3 Adaptation to policies

Through taxation, subsidies and regulation one can expect significant government

interference into all energy intensive businesses. Energy will become more expensive,

together with other raw materials. Resource efficiency of all industries will become a

key competitive advantage. Public procurement may stimulate even higher energy

efficiency standards.

3 Impact on Construction Industry

The built environment is globally responsible for about 40% of global CO2 emissions,

40% of solid waste generation and up to 40% of global energy use [9]. In the EU the

figures are similar. Construction industry is a significant user of energy and its products

are the places where most of the energy is used - in buildings around 40% and on the

roads and railways a further one third. Using better energy efficiency standards about

half of the energy used in buildings could be saved. Thus in buildings alone the 20%

reduction target could be achieved. But the savings would have to come from

refurbishing existing buildings, because only 1% of the European building stock is built

new each year. Several countries have already started the national program to develop

related strategies [10, 11].

In fact a lot of the low lying fruit of Figure 1 can be picked by the construction

industry. Because of all this, the construction industry is one of a key factors of the

third industrial revolution and, according to a study of Deutche Bank (Fig. 2) a double

winner - change in climate will require construction works and so will the construction

of new energy facilities, transportation and building infrastructure.

5

tourism

fossil

energy

impact of the change of climate

imp

act

of

the

cha

ng

e in

re

gula

tio

n,

ma

rke

t, g

ovt.

in

terv

en

tion

double winners

double losers

automotive

building

materials,

paper,

metal

food

chemical

industry

textiles

transportation

finance

mechanical and

electrical

engineering

construction and

associated sectors

agriculture

and

forestry

renewable

energy

+

+

-

-

Winning and loosing

sectors of climate change

Figure 2: Construction and associated sectors (top right) as a double winners of climate

change.

Although the situation may look encouraging for the construction industry, the

investments do not mean business as usual but more of it. The impact that construction

products have on the use of energy are so significant, that the industry itself will need to

undergo a major change in the years to come. About ¼ of the energy used up in a

building during its lifetime amounts to the energy needed to build it - make steel,

cement, concrete; do the transportation etc. Given the small proportion of new

construction the potential savings in this area are relatively small, given the size of the

industry, however, not negligible.

The challenge to build with less material has been a centuries long process where

more and more precise calculations and simulations allowed for the structures to lighter

but safer at the same time. The progress has been immense and little potential is left to

those the want to use less concrete and steel - not in the orders of 80-90% anyway.

In summary, the biggest potential for energy savings related to the construction

sector are related to energy use in existing buildings. Other opportunities are smaller

but will need to be tackled as well to meet the ambitious climate change mitigation and

adaptation plans.

4 Research agenda for ICT in construction

Construction industry will address climate change in the following ways:

retrofitting existing building stock for energy efficiency.

intelligent energy management in existing and new buildings.

resource efficiency of new buildings.

resource efficient building processes.

resource efficiency in materials, focus on renewable materials.

re-thinking the urban planning, settling patterns and transportation grid.

6

Because of this, the industry itself will need to go throug and innovation and learning

process. All of these themes have a significant ICT aspect [12]. It will be elaborated in

the following subsections.

4.1 Retrofitting existing building stock for energy efficiency

This is perhaps the single most important measure to be taken that allows for cheapest

and even profitable investments. The challenge is to make such retrofits on big scale, in

a cheap and industrialised manner. While the process to do so is ongoing in many cities,

innovation of business models as well as technology will be needed to approach the

problem in the required scale.

ICT in construction has too date been to much focused on the designing of new

buildings. We need better tools for rapid digitalisation of 3D buildings, rapid

assessment of their energy performance, interoperability with GIS and administrative

data bases related to building ownership. An extension of building information

modelling (BIM) standards may be in order to allow for the modelling of rough

geometries and properties of buildings as well as their locations. The goal would be for

the IT to assist in the planning of the retrofits.

Automation of window manufacturing is not a construction related issue. But

automation of façade reconstruction will be a challenge, in particular with the historic

buildings.

Interoperability of software for building envelope design and BIM programs will be

a desired feature [13, 14, 15].

4.2 Intelligent energy management in existing and new buildings

The goal here is to reach similar levels of occupant comfort with less energy. The

vision is that buildings have many more active elements (not just heating, cooling and

ventilation, but façade elements, shades, windows etc.) and sensors (temperature, air

quality, lighting) that are part of a computerised network. Introduction of IPV6 and

related technologies would allow for any electronic device be a part of an Internet

Protocol network and have a computerised control of all these active elements, possible

without human intervention or at a distance.

The underlying information would include building information models that would

allow for real time sensing, simulations and control of solutions would be based on real

time simulations. Learning from actions of the human occupants of the building and

their personal preferences would be made through machine learning algorithms. Links

with a smart energy grid could optimise the use of energy by availability and price as

well as include any of the potential building's energy generation facilities (e.g. solar

panels on the roof or photovoltaic façade) with the grid. Standardisation of sensors and

equipment interfaces will be an important issue.

Extensive work in these areas has been ongoing and includes the EU project called

REEB [16].

4.3 Energy efficiency of new buildings

7

While the energy use of existing buildings can be rough halved with retrofit, new

passive and zero emission residential, office buildings and industrial buildings have

been proven possible. The challenge is to make them standard which would also drive

down the cost.

Authors of integrated building design software such as ArchiCAD and Revit are

already incorporating possibilities to design for energy efficiency, but this and similar

software still features traditional building blocks. While a purely geometrical CAD

system does not limit the designer to a particular technology of a building or a building

envelope, an object oriented CAD system does promote the use of the built-in object.

The goal of the software developers therefore is to create object based CAD where the

objects are from a passive and carbon neutral design. Such design software could do a

lot to promote a certain type of a building, thus generate a paradigm shift in building

through the use of a design tool.

A precondition for that are building models that support this. Studies on the issue are

ongoing [17,18] as well as commercial applications [19].

4.4 Energy efficient building processes

Construction is about heavy stuff. Moving around the steel, concrete and other

materials uses a lot of transport related energy. Streamlining the process and shortening

the logistic pathways would reduce cost and energy use. The "Process and ICT" focus

area of the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) deals with this issue

[20].

4.5 Renewable materials

Currently, construction industry is using material such as steel, brick, cement and glass

that are energy non-efficient [21]. Reinforced concrete and steel are also very well

supported in a host of software applications. However, in many cases wood could

efficiently replace non-renewable materials. Use of wood is not only CO2 neutral, but

building the wood into a product captures and stores the CO2 for the life span of a

structure which can last for decades, even centuries.

Particular structural and envelope wood would require meaningful quantities,

however, its use could be promoted with better computational software (to design

structural elements, including highway overpasses and smaller bridges) as well 3D

modelling software to design buildings (this one with a direct link to manufacturing

lines and CNC machines that would cut timber to measure). Building with wood and

other highly manufactured not amorphous materials would require a much better

interface between design and manufacturing and could be an additional motive to move

towards BIM solutions.

4.6 Re-thinking the urban planning

Energy use of people lining in single detached houses is higher than that of people

living in multi storey apartment blocks. Also, living in the city is more energy efficient

8

than commuting from the suburbs. How much of their lifestyle people would like to

sacrifice we do not know. However, a rethinking on how we organise our settlements is

emerging [22]. This poses a challenge to the development of the geographical

information systems (GIS) and their environmental and transportation impacts.

4.7 Knowledge transfer issues

The industrial revolution and the changes in technologies outlined above will require a

massive change in building practises, processes, designs, technologies and materials.

Therefore this traditionally conservative industry will also need to upgrade its

knowledge transfer mechanisms.

Education. The changes will happen faster than the natural replacement of the

workforce. Even more than before, life long learning will be important. Self

learning using the Internet and other distance learning methods will be vital. There

are some good examples of this in the filed of construction, but it is lagging behind

many other areas.

Standardisation. Particularly the intelligent building, sensors, controls will need to

be standardised in order to be interoperable. Standardisation will also need to

proceed in the resource efficiency aspects of the conceptual building models,

particularly open access to standards.

Best practise sharing. In traditional construction it has taken centuries for some

good practices to spread and become ubiquitous. When there is a technological

change, this needs to happen in a faster manner. The internet offers an immense

opportunity to share good designs, good practical solutions.

A common element in all of the above is openness. By making open courseware, open

standards and open libraries of knowledge and best practices, the knowledge would

propagate faster and the contributions that construction can make to adaptation and

mitigation of climate change can be made more quickly. Supporting this openness

would be also a wise spending on public money that will be poured into the climate

change polices anyway, particularly because a lot of public buildings will be adapted as

well. Just making knowledge related to that publish would get best practise open

libraries started.

5 Conclusion

A major industrial revolution will be unfolding over the next couple of decades. It will

have a profound impact on all industries and on construction in particular. The core

products of civil and structural engineers - the load bearing structure and the interface

with the ground - will become an even smaller part in the cost structure of a building

product. The added value will be increasingly an "environmental added value". Either

the construction industry and researchers will seize the opportunity and take the various

mechanical, electrical and electronic active elements as a part of their portfolio or it will

need to collaborate much more closely with other engineers to provide it.

9

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