Optimal Utilization of Resources towards Neutral Climate Built Environments in Europe by 2030-2050.

LIFELINE-2050 will work together as a multidisciplinary team across six departments at the Faculty of Engineering at NTNU addressing various type of resources including material, water, spaces, energy, ICT, as well as human. 

The aim of LIFELINE-2050 is to optimize the utilization of our limited resources in synergetic way during the life cycle (i.e., the design, construction, operation, and demolish phases) of built environments in the line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 3 (Healthy lives and well-being), 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), 12 (Responsible consumption and production), and 17 (Partnerships for the goals). 

The main objective of the project LIFELINE-2050 is to develop a holistic assessment framework, digital optimization toolbox (including number of sub-digital twins), and education-innovation hub for achieving resource-effective built environments (e.g., university campuses, district areas) where complex resource-intensive sociotechnical systems need to be holistically optimized. 

Contact: Mohamed Hamdy

Digitalization of Solar Energy: a way to boost the exploitation of solar energy potential in Nordic built environment.

The objective of the project is to enhance the exploitation of the solar energy potential in Nordic cities - it aims to turn the Nordic conditions to unique opportunities to accelerate the penetration of solar energy in the Nordic built environment, using NTNU Campus as a pilot neighborhood. We want to enable significant innovation in the digitalization and visualization of solar energy data of urban surfaces (terrain, roofs, façades) by extending the solar mapping to:

1. Elaborate solar potential forecasting in real-time to predict solar energy generation
2. Implement climate change scenarios to evaluate the exploitation of solar energy.

Such position and the developed methodology will boost the exploitation of solar energy at current and future climate scenarios to reduce the GHG emissions. It will reach a wide range of stakeholders’ community and citizens by creating a research platform around the Centre of Green Shift in the Built Environment to support the development of solar energy planning and boost the solar market in Nordic countries. 

Contact: Gabriele Lobaccaro

Web: HELIOS

There is an increased pressure to build on agricultural soil for different purposes. Even if the areas are proteced by laws and most politicians in principle wants to protect agricultural soils in reality valuable areas, especially close to larger cities are taken for other purposes.

One option to reduce the impact on agricultural production is to move the soil to a new location. This has been done in several projects. However, only limited research has been done on this topic. Green move have a holistic approach to the problem to investigate it from an agricultural, environmental, political, engineering and geological point of view. The partners in the project includes the whole chain of stakeholders from Road and Rail administrations, Contractors, Consultants, Municipalities, County administration, Farmers organizations and soil protection organisations. This secure that all points of view will be represented in the project. The Research partners includes two Universities Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norwegian University of Life Sciences  and SINTEF to secure a real cross-disiplinary team to investigate this complex challenge.

GREEN MOVE will through the holistic approach investigate several aspects of the wicked problem of soil movement. We will include several field of research covering agricultural, natural, social and political, and engineering science. The project team will include 5 PhD-students and more than 20 professors/scientists in addition to the 10 partners from the full range of stakeholders.

Contact: Elena Scibilia / Inge Hoff

Web: GREEN MOVE

Collective Intelligence for Energy Flexibility.

COLLECTiEF will enhance, implement, test and evaluate an interoperable and scalable energy management system based on Collective intelligence (CI) that allows easy and seamless integration of legacy equipment into a collaborative network with reduced installation cost, data transfer and computational power while increasing data security, energy flexibility and climate resilience.

Contact: Amin Moazami 

Allowing digital twin as a service for smart buildings in PEDs can facilitate many coming built-environment projects where digital twin is needed to analyze and optimize the building performance at district scale considering technical, financial, environmental and humanity aspects. This e-infrastructure asset can continuously be developed and scaled up to handle larger projects with additional aspects. Such continuous work will reduce the time and effort needed in the coming projects.

Contact: Mohamed Hamdy

Automated reconstruction of 3D building models with semantic information by using Façade Grammar.

This project aims to interpret the geometric and topological relationships of semantic entities intuitively and further improve the accuracy of façade structure derivations. The difficulty in automatically reconstructing semantic façade models can be ascribed to two factors.

1. First, façade observations are often noisy, leading to a rough result of semantic entity extraction. Even when using state-of-the-art deep learning methods, their robustness remains unreliable.
2. The second factor is the complexity and diversity of the façade structures themselves, which makes it difficult to describe façades structure with different styles in a flexible manner. Existing methods such as those based on façade grammar are often unable to derive façade structures. In the fields of geographic information science (GIS) and photogrammetry, researchers primarily focus on addressing the second factor. 

Contact: Hongchao Fan

Data Driven Construction to Circular Economy.

The Growing Circle project aim to enhance the digitalization trends in the construction sector. It is necessary to develop mechanisms to foster information systematization, integration, management, maintenance and tracking about the built objects and the construction products that compose them.

Digital Data Templates or Data Templates are the standard and interoperable metadata structures with the capability of responding to these challenges, contributing to the effective implementation of more circular, more efficient and environmentally friendly practices.

A future based in a more efficient Construction Industry: The GrowingCircle project aims to highlight the added value of Data Templates through its implementation in several case studies, from design to construction, and inherent impacts for the use phase and eventual buildings decommissioning.

The project is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway grants by Innovation Norway
The project is promoted by IC – Instituto da Construção, Portugal with NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway as partner.

Contact: Eilif Hjelseth

Web: Growing Circle

Driven Geothermal Energy Pile for Heating/Cooling buildings: Innovative solution for today's energycrisis. 
 
Buildings can become more energy efficient by extracting ground heat and storing thermal energy in pile foundations. The environmental benefit of energy piles and other heat-producing underground geo-structures lies in reducing CO2 emissions.

Prof Rao Martand Singh and PhD candidate Habib Sadeghi working at the Geotechnics research group, at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received a 5-million NOK grant from the Research Council of Norway (Norges forskningsråd) to investigate precast concrete driven geothermal energy pile foundations for heating and cooling buildings. This project is supported by NTNU Technology Transfer Offices and our industrial partners Leimet (Finland), Sandnes og Jærbetong AS (Norway), and Seabrokers Group (Norway). 

New and innovative segmental types of precast concrete geothermal geothermal energy pile foundations are going to be constructed and tested utilizing steel joints that connect the segments. The research team has filed a patent to protect this innovative solution. This is the first time that geothermal energy piles will be utilized in Norway with the aim of providing renewable and sustainable heating/cooling energy (meeting the UN development goals 6, 9, 11).

The project is very timely as the energy prices have skyrocketed and a step forward in the field of the piling construction industry, which will bring an innovative solution to the current energy crises. Utilizing these precast concrete energy piles under buildings will significantly reduce the #energy (electricity, wood, fossil fuels) consumption and the associated #CO2 emissions of households. 

Forskere ved NTNU har utviklet en ny type pæleskjøt, kalt DEP Joint (Driven Energy Piles), som muliggjør henting av jordvarme direkte fra pælene som forankrer bygninger i bakken. Denne innovative løsningen eliminerer behovet for å bore egne brønner for å hente jordvarme, noe som tradisjonelt har vært kostbart og krevende. Pæleskjøten er designet etter et "LEGO-prinsipp" med kvadratiske stålforbindelser som kan kobles raskt og enkelt sammen. Gjennom å utnytte denne teknologien kan bygninger dra nytte av jordvarme, en betydelig kilde til fornybar energi, på en mer effektiv og kostnadsbesparende måte. Denne oppfinnelsen representerer et betydelig fremskritt innen bærekraftig byggeteknologi. 
 
Contact: Rao Martand Singh