The Spirit of Time—The Art of Self-Renovation to Improve Indoor Environment in Cultural Heritage Buildings

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of an old low-standard urban district with a strong historical and cultural heritage and propose more sustainable renovation solutions, acceptable for the residents and municipality. The challenges of physical renovation or refurbishment are complex due to poor condition of the buildings, municipal ownership and governance, mixed management with community and low rents, which are insufficient to cover the costs. The paper discusses the proposed solutions of living standards, supported by the research in two directions: (i) available resources and reuse of materials, (ii) developing a renovation guidance for inhabitants from the building physics perspective, including indoor environment quality. Challenges related to energy efficiency are addressed from the decision-making perspective to overcome the barrier of lack of motivation to invest in energy-efficient measures at the individual and community level. The interdisciplinary approach complements engineering-focused studies with a focus on the comfort conditions and the influence of occupant habits in sustainable buildings. The methods used were literature review, case studies with observations and survey, looking to cover all technical, social, and historical aspects of sustainable renovation of cultural heritage buildings with the same level of importance. Results show that to keep a sustainable, low-cost urban living model, instructions for self-renovation are a valuable guidance for non-professional actors to make more sustainable choices. In conclusion, we can emphasize that inhabitants are accustomed to lower living standards, so the project is aimed to present the proper solutions for improvement as a balance between new sustainable technical solutions, personal self-renovation skills, habits, and health

Sustainable Building Renovation in Residential Buildings: Barriers and Potential Motivations in Norwegian Culture

Retrofit of existing housing increases the possibility of meeting Sustainable Development Goals. Improving quality of life, minimising energy consumption and increasing productivity in buildings process with the aim of affordable housing (social, environmental, and economic sustainability) set new demands for renovation amongst residential housing in Norway. Most studies to date emphasised on mitigation of CO2 emissions in building sector through building renovations. However, recent studies started evaluating why such renovation plans may not be considered by property owners. This study investigates potential barriers and motivations for Sustainable Building Renovations (SBR) from house-owners’ perspective and discusses the role of urban Facility Management (FM) in promoting SBR. Results from a questionnaire survey with 341 citizens in Trondheim city, Norway, confirm economic issues as the main barrier for SBR with respondents suggesting different forms of financial support to resolve these barriers. Social engagement of citizens with public/private partners and neighbours illustrates the collective motivation for SBR. This requires an intermediary role like urban FM engaging citizens to co-create their needs in urban areas with public/private sectors. The output of this study helps to promote urban FM engaging with SBR targets through renovation of neighbourhoods

Evaluating assumptions of scales for subjective assessment of thermal environments – Do laypersons perceive them the way, we researchers believe?

International audienc

Common approaches to find the energy saving potentials for the Norwegian residential buildings: a review study

Building sector is shown as a huge energy consumer worldwide. Therefore, a thorough understanding of energy performance in buildings is essential to propose and implement sustainable strategies for the future plans; and consequently, reach the low carbon emission targets. This study aims to investigate an approach to gather or generate large-scale energy data for Norwegian residential buildings. Also, approaches to visualize data and implement digital information tools are reviewed in this study. A qualitative literature survey was conducted to evaluate the relevant approaches/strategies for large data collection in the building sector. Results confirmed that building energy models could be suitable for generating consistent and detailed data. Elaborate and simplified engineering methods, statistical methods, neural networks and support vector machines, are widely used models. A hybrid model combining simulation-based techniques and machine learning algorithms shows promising results. An energy model class which simulates the physical relationship of processes at the building or end-use levels, which also utilizes cloud computing, could help generating generic energy models based on key performance indicators. The dataset can then be trained in a machine learning algorithm, which utilize historical information to attribute building energy use to particular end-uses and can predict different scenarios for the Norwegian building stock based on cadastre data and statistical data. The outcome of this study can help to introduce approaches to find the energy saving potentials in Norwegian buildings and present the suitable refurbishment strategies for future planning

Influence of long-term thermal history on thermal comfort and preference

This study explores how climatic background or long-term thermal history influences individuals’ in-the-moment thermal comfort experiences. This investigation was conducted at eight mixed-mode university buildings in United Kingdom whose occupants had diverse thermal histories. The research design consisted of simultaneous environmental measurements, a questionnaire survey and observation on 3,452 students performing sedentary activities in the classrooms. To eliminate the influence of acclimatisation in the UK, a subset of 1,225 students with less than 3 years of residence in the UK were selected as the survey sample. Students’ thermal comfort responses were categorised into three main groups based on their climatic background compared to the UK (warmer, similar and cooler climatic background groups). Data was statistically analysed to derive the thermal comfort requirements of each climatic group based on reported thermal sensations, preferences, acceptability and comfort votes. The findings confirm the influence of long-term thermal history on thermal sensation, thermal comfort zone, acceptability, preference and comfort temperature (neutrality). There was generally no difference in the subjective thermal comfort of the students with similar climatic backgrounds to the UK and those from cooler climates than the UK. However, significant differences appeared between the warmer thermal history group and the other two groups. It was also demonstrated that the participants with a warmer thermal history had cooler thermal sensations compared to their counterparts in the similar-to and colder-than-UK thermal history groups, when exposed to the same environments. The optimal acceptable temperature was higher for the warmer climatic background (24 °C) than the similar/cooler climatic background groups (22 °C). Likewise, heightened values of preference and comfort temperatures were observed for the warmer thermal history group than the other two groups, despite their heavier clothing insulation than the other groups

The impact of an urban facilities management summer school on the participants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how an Urban Facilities Management (Urban FM) focused summer school in Norway in 2019 impacted knowledge creation, as well as the host and foreign educators, along with the international student participants.Design/methodology/approachThis paper’s data collection is formed as a “post-event study” using interviews and a quantitative survey from both the students and educators to look at the impact of the summer school on the student and the associated educational programs.FindingsThe outcomes of this study indicate that the impact on educators and their educational programs was substantial with regard to their teaching experiences. The study confirmed that foreign experience allowed not just for greater potential for cross institution cooperation for the future but also allowed for the usage of the summer school case studies in host and guest educational programs. For the students, the added value was in the international experience primarily and a chance to study on a case study project. The study was also successful in the dissemination of Urban FM knowledge.Originality/valueThis paper also offers added theoretical value in the development of a model in future projects on how to capitalize on the potential impact of the summer school on educators and students. The possibilities for increased dissemination and knowledge creation in Urban FM is also significant