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Circular Design and Sustainability Assessments for the Built Environment

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Sustainable Science and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2022) | Viewed by 10473

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Unit Smart Energy & Built Environment, VITO, Boeretang 200, 2400 Mol Belgium And Energyville, Thor Park 831, 3600 Genk, Belgium
Interests: life cycle assessment; sustainability evaluations; renewable energy

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Guest Editor
Architectural Engineering and Technology, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: circular buildings; sustainable structural design

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Guest Editor
Architectural Engineering and Technology, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: structural design and mechanics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit contributions to a Special Issue in the Journal of Applied Sciences on “Circular Design and Sustainability Assessments for the Built Environment”. The built environment generates considerable environmental impacts, consumes enormous amounts of resources, and generates tons of waste. This is a cause for great global concern and has led to considerable political attention and initiatives. The transition to a circular economy has seen a growth of a variety of design strategies and parameters, sustainability assessment, and decision support tools to address these challenges. The topic of this Special Issue is all valid updates on new insights, methods and/or reviews on circular design strategies, and sustainability assessments focusing on the built environment.

The topics of interest for this Special Issue include (but are not limited to):

  1. Design and construction strategies for circular buildings and structures, including design for change strategies, reuse, and stock management;
  2. Circular building products and systems;
  3. Circularity indicators;
  4. Sustainability assessment methods, such as life cycle assessment and material flow analysis for the built environment;
  5. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods for the circular built environment;
  6. Design for environment;
  7. Building information modelling and circular design;
  8. Monitoring and evaluation of reuse potential of building structures and materials.

All original articles, case reports, and review articles are welcome for submission.

Dr. Neethi Rajagopalan
Dr. Stijn Brancart
Prof. Dr. Mauro Overend
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • circular design
  • circular buildings
  • life cycle assessment
  • sustainability assessment
  • multi-criteria decision making
  • design for disassembly

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 2035 KiB  
Article
Waste Management in a Sustainable Circular Economy as a Part of Design of Construction
by Marcela Spišáková, Tomáš Mandičák, Peter Mésároš and Matej Špak
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(9), 4553; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12094553 - 30 Apr 2022
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 7262
Abstract
The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries are the producers of the most significant waste stream in the European Union. Known EU initiatives propose to deal with the issue of construction and demolition waste (CDW) according to the principles of a circular economy: [...] Read more.
The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries are the producers of the most significant waste stream in the European Union. Known EU initiatives propose to deal with the issue of construction and demolition waste (CDW) according to the principles of a circular economy: the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle). CDW is generated during the whole life cycle of construction. The lack of information about the quantity of CDW during the design phase of building needed for sustainable design of construction was identified as a research gap. The aim of our research is to quantify construction and demolition waste during the construction design phase in a circular economy. The proposed method is based on the generation rate calculation method. This paper describes the proposed methodology for quantifying selected types of construction waste: excavated soil, concrete, and masonry. This information is essential from the point of view of a sustainable circular economy. The main contributions of the paper were identified during the decision-making process of sustainable building design, during the audit of CDW management, and during building information modelling as a support tool for CDW management. As early as the construction design phase, there is the possibility of choosing technologies, construction processes, and materials that have a higher degree of circularity in the economy. Full article
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22 pages, 5227 KiB  
Article
Selection of a Sustainable Structural Beam Material for Rural Housing in Latin América by Multicriteria Decision Methods Means
by Juan Francisco Nicolalde, John Yaselga and Javier Martínez-Gómez
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(3), 1393; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12031393 - 28 Jan 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2551
Abstract
Latin America presents the need of more accessible housing in the rural areas of the region; however, problems that this populations have to face are cost, accessibility and seismic events that leave structural damages in the buildings of the population, raising the need [...] Read more.
Latin America presents the need of more accessible housing in the rural areas of the region; however, problems that this populations have to face are cost, accessibility and seismic events that leave structural damages in the buildings of the population, raising the need of resisting permanent housing or temporary shelter. Moreover, the conventional steel materials are not always affordable, which makes us consider the utilization of alternative sustainable materials that are easier to reach and with a seismic resistance. In this sense, the conditions of an earthquake are simulated, specialized software selects and recreates candidate materials and multicriteria decision methods make the final selection of the best material to be evaluated in a simulation. In this way, it has been found that a beam must resist an effort of 5.96 MPa, candidate materials are composites and naturals, and considering mechanical, environmental and price aspects, the decision methods chose the bamboo as the best material. Lastly, another simulation validates the selection, allowing us to conclude that the multicriteria decision methods used succeeded to find the best alternative. Full article
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