Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con
Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con
Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con
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SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION HANDBOOK 2<br />
arranging maintenance activities to ensure that building functions perform normally can improve<br />
facility and equipment maintenance efficiency (Ko, 2009).<br />
Indoor Emergency Navigation. Indoor emergency navigation based on building information<br />
modeling (BIM) can help in case of fire or other incidents during the occupation of a building. High<br />
relevancy exists, especially for complex public buildings like airports (Rüppel and Stübbe, 2008).<br />
Thereby, the same could be applied to emergency navigation on a construction site. Safety of<br />
occupants of buildings could be significantly improved by better orientation of people and rescue<br />
troupes within the building as well easier access to life saving facilities.<br />
Operation. In recent years, the “house of the future” had been discussed also in terms of RFID<br />
technology which could support the automation of applications within households and during the<br />
occupancy of houses. One application of RFID is a refrigerator developed by the German company<br />
Liebherr. Liebherr’s refrigerator detects products beyond the date of expiry and automatically creates<br />
a shopping list (see Metro, 2009). The information is shown on a screen integrated into the door.<br />
Additionally, the RFID system could inform about products “out-of-stock” or products that have been<br />
declared as important by the owner before. As several companies in the consumer goods industry like<br />
Germanys Metro AG or the US Company Wal Mart in association with manufacturers of consumer<br />
goods and producers of RFID systems, are planning to tag each single product. Apart from<br />
information about the price and the date of expiry other information stored on the transponder could<br />
be, for instance, ingredients, calories or nutritional values as well as manufacturers and delivery dates.<br />
Another application of RFID is the automated setting of ovens. Therefore, a RFID antenna is installed<br />
in an oven to recognise products with tags. The reading device initiates related oven settings from the<br />
cooking instruction at the tag. However, this is still to be scrutinised in terms of the adoption of food<br />
with tags by the consumers. A further application, although closely related to the manufacturing<br />
industry, is the application of RFID for washing machines. Clothes are signed with tags to either<br />
support logistics in the fashion industry or to monitor working cloth of, for instance, construction<br />
workers. Washing-instructions stored on the tag are used to set the optimal washing machine program<br />
in order not to damage cloth. For further information on RFID applications in household appliances<br />
see also (RFID Journal, 2003).<br />
Deconstruction and Recycling<br />
At the end of the life time of a building usually, after several reuse and renovation cycles,<br />
deconstruction of a building takes place. With respect to environmentally friendly and sound<br />
behaviour, the aim of deconstruction should be to allow a systematic selective deconstruction of<br />
buildings which helps to separate different kinds of building materials and their reutilization or<br />
recycling (Schultmann and Rentz, 2002; Schultmann, 2005). Compared to other industrial products<br />
the deconstruction and recovery of buildings or building materials is quite complex. In several other<br />
industries the so called extended producer responsibility (EPR) with the objective to return spent<br />
products or components to their original producers is already implemented. Apart from components<br />
which are routinely replaced or maintained it is far less likely to return building materials to their<br />
manufacturer. The main reason is the usually long lifetime of a building ranging from 50 to 150 years,<br />
in comparison to other industrial products.<br />
Before deconstruction takes place information has to be gathered on the composition of the building,<br />
i.e. on materials and components to be deconstructed. This includes data about the manufacturer, built<br />
in date as well as on contamination with hazardous substances. However, information on the<br />
composition of buildings either gets lost during the lifetime of the building or is not updated during<br />
renovation processes. Hence, information available for deconstruction planning is inaccurate and<br />
incomplete and costly surveys on the composition of the building and materials to be dealt with (e.g.<br />
asbestos or other contaminated material) have to be commissioned, before, on the one hand, selective<br />
deconstruction plans can be set up, and, on the other hand, cost estimates and bids can be made.<br />
Concluding, a retention of information over the whole life of the building would significantly add to<br />
the ecologic as well as to the economic dimension of sustainability by enabling a more precise cost<br />
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