From ‘Zero’ to ‘Positive’ Energy Concepts and from Buildings to Districts—A Portfolio of 51 European Success Stories

Since 2020, Europe has introduced strategies and key policies to promote common efforts on a roadmap toward energy efficiency and decarbonization. From ‘low’ to ‘passive’ and from ‘zero’ to ‘positive’, the concepts have fascinated the scientific community around the globe and promise the deployment of planning responses to the challenges of decarbonization faced by the European and local agendas. This works provides an overview of a comprehensive understanding of emerging concepts with a focus beyond the boundaries of an individual building. The booklet of 51 European projects, firstly introduced in Joint Programming Initiative documents, unveiled the prioritization of energy efficiency and the path for the enhancement of environmentally friendly communities. In this sense, this work presents an overview of the Net-Zero Energy Districts, and beyond, namely through the discussion of different aspects and dimensions. Based on published scientific literature, this work collects, organizes and discusses approaches of European cases, concluding with the knowledge base to support further developments and reinforce an established pathway for future implementations

Unveiling the Potential of Machine Learning Applications in Urban Planning Challenges

In a digitalized era and with the rapid growth of computational skills and advancements, artificial intelligence and Machine Learning uses in various applications are gaining a rising interest from scholars and practitioners. As a fast-growing field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Artificial Intelligence deals with smart designs, data mining and management for complex problem-solving based on experimental data on urban applications (land use and cover, configurations of the built environment and architectural design, etc.), but with few explorations and relevant studies. In this work, a comprehensive and in-depth review is presented to discuss the future opportunities and constraints in meeting the next planning portfolio against the multiple challenges in urban environments in line with Machine Learning progress. Bringing together the theoretical views with practical analyses of cases and examples, the work unveils the huge potential, but also the potential barriers of the complexity of Machine Learning to urban planning strategies

Zero-Carbon Communities: Research Hotspots, Evolution, and Prospects

Global warming is a worldwide concern, with buildings generating more than 40% of the annual global CO2 emissions. A commonly accepted system of global standards for zero-carbon buildings and communities has not yet been established. In this research, the development history, hotspots, and trends at the urban scale with theoretical and data support are summarized based on the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection. The review contains works from 1997 to 2022. A total of 19,014 papers were collected, with an overall increasing trend in the number of articles with specific keywords. The scope of the research is broad, covering the environment, sciences, ecology, chemistry, material science, physics, meteorology, atmospheric sciences, and so on. The hotspots in the low-carbon community (LCC) and zero-carbon community (ZCC) involve a wide range of disciplines, and collaborative research between related disciplines should be strengthened to propose practical solutions for the development of zero-carbon cities. The establishment of the ZCC mainly focuses on a zero-carbon-emission construction and zero-carbon operations. This research found approaches such as the choices of building construction and material, a waste recycling system, a regenerating energy system, transportation, and an examination of the community composition to realize the ZCC. In the literature it is presented that the difficulties in the construction of the ZCC are due to the lack of research in practice, operation, and subsequent maintenance. Moreover, other scholars can deepen the research on the hotspots of ZCC

The Overview of the Conservation and Renewal of the Industrial Belgian Heritage as a Vector for Cultural Regeneration

Industrial heritage reflects the development track of human production activities and witnessed the rise and fall of industrial civilization. As one of the earliest countries in the world to start the Industrial Revolution, Belgium has a rich industrial history. Over the past years, a set of industrial heritage renewal projects have emerged in Belgium in the process of urban regeneration. In this paper, we introduce the basic contents of the related terms of industrial heritage, examine the overall situation of protection and renewal in Belgium. The industrial heritage in Belgium shows its regional characteristics, each region has its representative industrial heritage types. In the Walloon region, it is the heavy industry. In Flanders, it is the textile industry. In Brussels, it is the service industry. The kinds of industrial heritages in Belgium are coordinate with each other. Industrial heritage tourism is developed, especially on eco-tourism, experience tourism. The industrial heritage in transportation and mining are the representative industrial heritages in Belgium. There are a set of numbers industrial heritages are still in running based on a successful reconstruction into industrial tourism projects. Due to the advanced experience in dealing with industrial heritage, the industrial heritage and the city live together harmoniously

Towards the development of a net-zero energy district evaluation approach: A review of sustainable approaches and assessment tools

International audienceDistricts have a significant role in achieving the principles of sustainability. Within the past decades, a great variety of assessment tools and methodologies has been developed in an effort to ‘translate’ the sustainability criteria into applied cases. There is an increasing interest in this contribution scaled up the assessment to larger territorial analysis and urban agglomerations. Notwithstanding, developing an assessment tool with sustainable standards requires strategic approaches to incorporate the theoretical framework to their implementation of city districts by measuring their performance in a consistent manner in respect of multiple criteria. Among these issues, energy efficiency and the zero energy objectives are significant for European policies. This study aims to provide an overview of the existing assessment tools and methods comparing their criteria and key parameters. As a second step, it introduces a simplified methodological assessment theoretical tool (U-ZED) by focusing on the commitment towards the zero energy targets in a future district. In a more general perspective, the study deals with the challenge of the development of a tool from building to district with the main concern to define the context of sustainable and long-term districts dealing with the challenges of 2050 horizon

Stewardship of Industrial Heritage Protection in Typical Western European and Chinese Regions: Values and Dilemmas

Along with the increase in modern industry, original facilities and cultures have disappeared progressively, leading to the disappearance of traditional values. However, from the perspective of the stewardship of industrial heritage, preservation is vital for Western Europe, where the Industrial Revolution emerged firstly, and it has leading technology in terms of the advanced stewardship of industrial heritage protection. Meanwhile, there is a large market for industrial heritage growth in China, but its stewardship began later. Horizontal and vertical research into the stewardship of the industrial heritage of these two regions offers a review of the developed industrial regions and experiences for developing industrial regions in their future expansion. By analysing the values and dilemmas and the features of the legal, administrative, and fund guarantee systems, this paper summarizes the advanced expertise of the stewardship of industrial heritage in Western Europe and China and proposes strategies based on them

Unveiling the Evolution of Innovation Ecosystems: An Analysis of Triple, Quadruple, and Quintuple Helix Model Innovation Systems in European Case Studies

Despite the rising interest in smart city initiatives worldwide, governmental theories along with the managerial perspectives of city planning are greatly lacking in the literature. It is definitely understandable that the adoption of configurational pathways toward the 'smart' 'governance' models is required as a key factor and smartness' facilitator in modern cities. In this manuscript, we display an exhaustive literature review on the importance of the n-Helix models along with a benchmarking critical approach through selected European case studies. This paper reveals the lack of exhaustive analyses for the methodological investigation, identification, and adoption of the most appropriate governance model per project including collaborative approaches. In addition, the paper deploys modular frameworks to efficiently address the continuous urban challenges, such as the rapid urbanization or the climate change

Stewardship of Industrial Heritage Protection in Typical Western European and Chinese Regions: Values and Dilemmas

Along with the increase in modern industry, original facilities and cultures have disappeared progressively, leading to the disappearance of traditional values. However, from the perspective of the stewardship of industrial heritage, preservation is vital for Western Europe, where the Industrial Revolution emerged firstly, and it has leading technology in terms of the advanced stewardship of industrial heritage protection. Meanwhile, there is a large market for industrial heritage growth in China, but its stewardship began later. Horizontal and vertical research into the stewardship of the industrial heritage of these two regions offers a review of the developed industrial regions and experiences for developing industrial regions in their future expansion. By analysing the values and dilemmas and the features of the legal, administrative, and fund guarantee systems, this paper summarizes the advanced expertise of the stewardship of industrial heritage in Western Europe and China and proposes strategies based on them

Solar thermal and wind energy applications: Case study of a small Spanish village

The present work examines the supply of heating and electricity to the Spanish village of Uruena, using biomass and other local renewable sources as a result of the growing interest worldwide towards the development of sustainable and energy independent small communities. Specifically, this case study considers the design of a district heating system consisting of a solar heating plant, a biomass plant using straw as a sustainable fuel for the base load and an oil boiler for the peak load, coupled with a hot water tank as a thermal energy storage option. Two alternative scenarios are analyzed for electricity generation purposes, namely a system consisting of three small wind turbines and a system with a single large wind turbine. The results show that the cost of large-scale electricity storage depends on the application and often involves significant capital investments

Use of AI Algorithms in Different Building Typologies for Energy Efficiency towards Smart Buildings

Buildings’ heating and cooling systems account for an important part of total energy consumption. The EU’s directives and engagements motivate building owners and relevant stakeholders in the energy and construction sectors towards net zero energy buildings by maximizing the use of renewable energy sources, ICT, and automation systems. However, the high costs of investment for the renovation of buildings, in situ use of renewable energy production, and installation of expensive ICT infrastructure and automation systems in small–medium range buildings are the main obstacles for the wide adoption of EU building directives in small- and medium-range buildings. On the other hand, the concept of sharing computational and data storage resources among various buildings can be an alternative approach to achieving smart buildings and smart cities where the main control power resides on a server. Unlike other studies that focus on the implementation of AI techniques in a building or separated buildings with local processing resources and data storage, in this work a corporate server was employed to control the heating systems in three building typologies and to examine the potential benefits of controlling existing buildings in a unified energy-savings platform. The key finding of this work is that the AI algorithms incorporated into the proposed system achieved significant energy savings in the order of 20–40% regardless of building typology, building functionality, and type of heating system, despite the COVID-19 measures for frequent ventilation of the buildings, even in cases with older-type heating systems