La gestione digitale dei sistemi urbani. Una chiave per affrontare le sfide della sostenibilità ambientale nel settore edilizio

Il problema della sostenibilità ambientale è sempre più critico, in particolare nelle aree ad alta densità abitativa e urbane, dove l’impatto delle attività umane è significativo. La sostenibilità si riferisce alla capacità di mantenere un equilibrio tra l’uso delle risorse naturali e la conservazione dell’ambiente. Attualmente, i sistemi urbani e l’ambiente costruito sono responsabili di circa il 75% delle emissioni di gas serra a livello globale e consumano circa il 75% delle risorse energetiche del pianeta. Inoltre, oltre il 65% della popolazione mondiale vive e lavora nelle città, concentrando le attività emissive in tali contesti

Sustainable Restoration of Cultural Heritage in the digital era

The reprocessing, preservation, and maintenance of the wide historical architectural heritage in Italy represent one of the main challenges of digitalization; not only it is one of the oldest among in Europe, but it is also widespread across the country between cities and rural areas.  The care of such an aging built environment needs a carefully planned approach that can take advantage of new technologies such as Historical/Heritage Building Information Modelling (H-BIM) and Digital Twin (DT). The final goal is to promote a long-term sustainable restoration with high qualitative standards. Usually, the topic of sustainability is discussed for new constructions where it is of fundamental importance to save materials, energy, land use and to reduce the carbon footprint. However, being the number of historical buildings elevate in Italy, the concept shall be extended also to them, that are way more fragile if compared to the surrounding. Moreover, cultural heritage is connected to specific challenges that need to be addressed. What was happened in Aquila region after the earthquake of 2019 must not happen again. Digital technologies can be used to prevent such a catastrophic event, preventing and limiting damages, providing evaluable information, and realizing a tool that can be shared among the stakeholders to restore the physical and cultural value of an historical building also in case of extreme events

Towards a healthy city: urban and architectural strategies for age-friendly design

The main challenges that today’s metropolises have to face, in addition to an often-unregulated urban growth, concern the progressive aging of the world’s population. This article proposes an evaluation and support tool for age-friendly design based on integrating the certification system, combined with a predictive approach that characterizes Digital Twins. The goal is to transform a city segment from a Smart to Healthy City, where technology will continuously improve the physical and social environments. A model structured in this way and highlighting its physical discontinuities at the urban level allows simulating interventions to make them safer and respond on time to the deficiencies in the preventive assessment phase. A virtual functionalized urban sector will be obtained, offering safe roadways and green spaces and adequate services to avoid the concentration of specific activities in the same areas (commerce, education, health services). The innovative aspect of the research is the multidimensional approach, which allows you to combine the potential of digital models made in Building Information Modeling (BIM) environment with the Geographic Information System (GIS), further integrated with the Age-friendly system of evaluation and certification, which are an articulate and valid tool to support decision-making processes to design places on a human scale. This tool can also be helpful in the context of the health emergency we are experiencing due to the pandemic, which has placed an urgent need to rethink urban spaces to promote a greater sense of tranquillity, safety, and liveability. The purpose is to manage the flow of entry and exit from places of aggregation, imagining structures that can transform themselves when necessary and act as strategic support to health facilities. As a case study for the evaluation of the peculiarities of living spaces and social contexts, it was chosen the Balduina district, an urban area of Rome

Efficiency and Sustainability: The Role of Digitization in Re-Inhabiting the Existing Building Stock

Cities are complex and constantly evolving systems where changing social needs have always reshaped the built environment. Considering recent evolutionary trends in housing emergencies, amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and environmental sustainability goals, a rethinking of the building heritage is fundamental. This article aims to promote the conversion of buildings designed initially for nonresidential uses as a process and project strategy based on energy efficiency and a holistic and integrated vision of the circular economy. The methodological approach is based on two main phases: definition of evaluative parameters for the potential reuse of a building, and integration of the evaluation system in a BIM and GIS environment. The result is a tool for rapid automatic pre-evaluation of the potential conversion of a building into a residential space. Applying the developed methodology allows for a practical approach to the significant issue of sustainable construction, with particular attention to energy improvement and the reduction of environmental impact related to the construction of new buildings. The originality of the contribution lies in the systematization of various digital technologies to provide fundamental support for managing and transforming the varied and widespread unused real estate assets in a state of abandonment and degradation