Holger Wallbaum

Activity-based flexible offices (AFOs) provide a variety of workspaces to meet the need for social interactions and privacy at work. This study investigates the relationship between the design characteristics of AFOs and users’ perceptions of visual and acoustic privacy and social interactions. This case study is based on post-occupancy evaluations...

För att uppnå det nationella målet att bli koldioxidneutral till år 2045 spelar städernas färdplaner för energiomställning en viktig roll inte minst genom energiplaner. Hur kan dessa effektivt implementeras och vilka är de potentiella flaskhalsarna?

Buildings are responsible for around 30 to 40% of the energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in European countries. Building stock energy models (BSEMs) are an established method to assess the energy demand and environmental impact of building stocks. Spatial analysis of building stock energy demand has so far been limited to cases where...

In order to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, cities need to develop robust energy transition strategies relying both on the local capacity of combining social, economic and environmental perspectives in the decision-making process and on the collaboration between different actors to achieve knowledge and data integration. Scenarios are well-est...

Among International Energy Agency members, Sweden is one of the upfront countries in implementing energy policies to achieve zero net emissions. Despite having the lowest share of fossil sources in its primary energy supply, becoming carbon neutral by 2045 is a challenging target. To meet the national goal, cities’ roadmaps and strategic plans have...

As the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the construction and real estate sector receive more attention, more and more countries include an environmental assessment of buildings based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in their building regulations. Sweden introduced mandatory climate declarations in January 2022, for example. To support st...

This paper introduces a new method to account for the stocks and flows of road infrastructure at the national level based on material flow accounting (MFA). The proposed method closes some of the current shortcomings in road infrastructures that were identified through MFA: (1) the insufficient implementation of prospective analysis, (2) heavy use...

This study investigated the current design circumstances of an office as well as employees’ perceptions of the office environment in relation to their perceived health, drawing on sense of coherence theory (comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness). Previous studies have related the physical office environment to employee health. Howeve...

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is a major domain of building conditions relating to occupant comfort, health and well-being. Especially in the office environment, IEQ can influence work productivity positively. Within the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), goal 3 good health and well-being, and goal 8 decent work and economic growth ar...

Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) witnesses increasing popularity in the built environment. LCA stimulates among others an efficient use of natural resources and a reduction of carbon emissions through quantification of material and energy inputs and emissions in the building life cycle. Thereby, LCA aspires to contribute to SDG12 on ensuri...

PURPOSE: Within the field of life cycle assessment (LCA), simplifications are a response to the practical restrictions in the context of a study. In the 1990s, simplifications were part of a debate on streamlining within LCA. Since then, many studies have been published on simplifying LCA but with little attention to systematise the approaches avai...

The use of round bamboo as load bearing member for low-rise housing is an interesting alternative construction method for tropical regions. Similar to timber engineering, a predictable fire resistance is a requirement for its legal approval and application at scale. The research presents fire test results on selected bamboo-based construction syste...

PurposeThis study aims to establish a regionalized environmental impact assessment of construction machinery equipped with diesel engines certified by the European emission standard Stage V, and operated in cold climatic zones in Europe.Method The study quantifies potential environmental impacts associated with construction machinery over the entir...

In line with EU Directives, European building portfolio owners are required to bring their stock to nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) standards by 2050. To fulfil this goal in a timely and cost-effective manner, they will need to have a comprehensive understanding of their buildings’ condition, as well as consistent information on viable energy an...

This research investigates methodologies of Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and Green Building Certification Systems (GBCS) along with the European standard EN 16309 for social performance assessment for buildings. We follow a two-step approach of first reviewing methods used to perform an S-LCA in the literature and then comparing the methods...

This article sets the scene for the special issue of Cities & Health Journal on ‘Transforming cities and health: policy, innovation and practice.’ It focuses on systematic transformations to meet sustainability and climate goals whilst also placing health at the heart of policy change and action. Our intention is to raise broad issues drawing on mu...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the literature on office design approaches (ODAs) in relation to employee health. The overall goal is to facilitate the practical use and theoretical development of design approaches to healthy offices. Design/methodology/approach A scoping review of 7,432 papers collected from 4 electronic databases and 5 scient...

Purpose Winter road maintenance in the Nordic climate is demanding due to challenging weather conditions, high precipitation, and icy conditions. As a leading country in the transition to low-emission transport, Norway must work to reduce their emissions while providing a safe level of service through winter maintenance operations. This article inv...

In strategic planning, maintenance and renovation plans serve as an instrument for multiple objectives (e.g., to control degradation , sustain optimal building performance, reduce the costs of operations, and meet budget requirements, etc.). The lack of a proper long-term plan can lead to financial difficulties, especially in older buildings where...

Ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems are using vertical ground heat exchangers, known as Borehole Heat Exchangers (BHEs), as a heat source or sink. The performance of the GSHP system strongly relies on the ground temperature surrounding the BHEs. This temperature depends on many parameters and varies during the operating time. Therefore, the dete...

The building industry is a major contributor of CO 2 emission. Wood construction is a good option for carbon storage among various construction alternatives. Considering the growing market of multi-story wooden building in Sweden, CLT (cross laminated timber) structure with an alternative insulation composite with PIR insulation and MgO board was p...

Residential buildings take a large share of the globally accumulated construction material stock. Knowledge regarding material stocks and flows and the spatial and temporal dynamics of residential structures is needed to enhance material circularity and, consequently, reduce the inflow of raw materials and the outflow of demolition waste. In this s...

Renovating the existing building stock has a significant potential to achieve the goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the European Union. However, a common European renovation project focuses primarily on improving the thermal performance of the building shell by adding insulation to the opaque surfaces and improve the thermal perfor...

Aim : This review aims to explore the relation between the physical office environment and employee health as found in the Nordic literature. Background : The Nordic countries have a worldwide fame for their high living and working standards. Nevertheless, they have also been facing global challenges related to demographic changes, aging population...

Combinations of different factors and their relative importance have a mixed effect on the longevity of pavements, which are essential to be understood to enhance long-term maintenance planning. This study used spatial road data from Norway followed by integrating temporal-spatial and statistical analyses to show a potential approach to estimate th...

A large share of construction material stock (MS) accumulates in urban built environments. To attain a more sustainable use of resources, knowledge about the spatial distribution of urban MS is needed. In this article, an innovative spatial analysis approach to urban MS is proposed. Within this scope, MS indicators are defined at neighborhood level...

Cost-effectiveness of deep renovation has been assessed thoroughly on a building level. Such studies provide limited guidance when prioritizing renovation measures for a building portfolio. On a stock level, building-stock modelling is commonly used to assess impact of renovation on a national and city level, targeting stakeholders operating at a p...

Urban building-stocks are responsible for a significant share of resource and energy use. To quantify the potential for reducing energy and environmental impact, building-stock modelling (BSM) is commonly used. Recently, the focus of BSM has expanded to include environmental impacts and life-cycle assessment (LCA). However, impact categories are of...

Residential buildings account for almost a quarter of the total energy use in Sweden and building owners are, therefore, under pressure from policy makers to improve the energy performance of their buildings. Building portfolio owners (BPOs) generally face multiple barriers in energy efficiency investments such as financial constraints and lack of...

The article entitled ‘Review: the availability of life-cycle studies in Sweden’ by Croft and colleagues (January 2019, volume 24, issue 1, pages 6–11) has puzzled many researchers in Sweden. The stated purpose of the article is to review the availability of water and carbon footprinting studies and life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies in Sweden. Des...

This paper reveals the main factors that guide road alignment design process in Norway. The goal is to discover what constitutes the main priorities for road planners, how these priorities are ranked when it comes to alignment selection, and how they are related to guiding factors identified in official planning documents and government transport p...

The current work investigates how adding a battery of optimal capacity to a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system can improve its economic feasibility. Also, the effect of different parameters on the feasibility of the PV system was evaluated. The optimal battery capacity (OBC) was determined for different saving targets of the annual electricity...

The current work investigates how adding a battery of optimal capacity to a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system can improve its economic feasibility. Also, the effect of different parameters on the feasibility of the PV system was evaluated. The OBC was determined for different saving targets of the annual electricity consumption of the chosen...

Proactive maintenance strategies in principle are devised to control degradation and sustain optimal performance of building components. While realizing the technical necessities, they also serve as an instrument towards multiple and often conflicting objectives during financial constraints. An optimal proactive maintenance strategy therefore shoul...

The need for winter road maintenance (WRM) is changing in cold regions due to climate change. How the different modes of WRM will contribute to future overall emissions from infrastructure is therefore of great interest to road owners with a view to a more sustainable, low-carbon future. In the quest for near-zero-emissions transport, all aspects o...

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Effective and efficient road transportation in Norway is a continuing concern. The growth in population and the continuing need for better infrastructure to serve this population propel the growth of road construction. Roads will continue to occupy the most prominent place in the Norwegian transport puzzle as the most commonly used form of transpor...

Improving the sustainability performance of construction industry is driven by two forces: regulatory push (policy initiatives), and market pull where improving a corporate sustainability performance can be financially beneficial for enterprises. Through the investigation of the sustainability hotspots and impacts, concerning social and environment...

With the increasing importance of the sustainable product development of the building materials for the sustainable building and its industries, this study structured the existing sustainability assessment methods based on a common information structure, which was classified by its categories, aspects, and indicators. Sustainability indicator lists...

Recognizing the value of open-source research databases in advancing the art and science of HVAC, in 2014 the ASHRAE Global Thermal Comfort Database II project was launched under the leadership of University of California at Berkeley's Center for the Built Environment and The University of Sydney's Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Laboratory. The...

The European building stock was renewed at a rapid pace during the period 1950–1975. In many European countries, the building stock from this time needs to be renovated, and there are opportunities to introduce energy efficiency measures in the renovation process. Information availability and increasingly available analysis tools make it possible t...

Urban building-stocks use a significant amount of resources and energy. At the same time, they have a large potential for energy efficiency measures (EEM). To support decision-making and planning, spatial building-stock models are used to examine the current state and future development of urban building-stocks. While these models normally focus on...

Performing a comprehensive emission accounting via monitoring equipment to survey the performance of machinery is often an intensive work and costly. This often requiring hours of measurements and a sufficient number of observations to obtain valid findings. The purpose of current work is to introduce a screening emission accounting as a way to hav...

Värmeledningsförmågan (λ) hos superisoleringsmaterial (SIM) är mellan 2–5 gånger lägre än för konventionella isoleringsmaterial. Detta betyder att värmeförluster genom byggnadens klimatskal kan reduceras med mellan 50–80 procent. Med målet att ta fram rekommendationer för hur SIM kan användas har forskare under fyra år arbetat i IEA EBC Annex 65. S...

The use of cellulosic materials in the construction of low-rise housing in tropical climates has great potential. Bambusa blumeana (B. blumeana, J.A. and J.H. Schultes), the most abundantly available bamboo species in the Philippines, is a promising alternative material for the construction of cost-efficient buildings. However, to comply with munic...

El proyecto Smart Sustainable Offices (SSO) es un producto de años de investigación y cientos de miles de datos recogidos en más de 30 edificios de oficinas de Suiza, Suecia y España. Inicialmente concebido para investigar las interdependencias entre usuarios de oficinas y su entorno de trabajo en un contexto europeo, ha terminado convertido en un...

The Smart Sustainable Offices project (SSO) is a product of years of research with large sets of data collected from more than 30 office buildings in Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain. Based on scientific evidence, the concept of SSO, initially conceived as a research plan to address the interdependencies between office users and their working environ...

Resource stock and flow accounting has been increasingly applied on a country and city level. This paper elaborates on the possibilities to conduct a resource flow analysis even on a neighborhood/district level to identify, e.g., resource use related characteristics. Such resource patterns can be used to identify areas in different parts of a count...

Purpose The environmental impact of the social building stock is relevant, particularly in emerging economies. Life cycle thinking is not yet established, however. Locally available, alternative building concepts could potentially reduce the environmental impact of the construction segment. This paper examines the environmental performance of “as-b...

PurposeThe share of variable renewable energy sources (vRES) in the German electricity grid has increased over the past few decades. Due to the nature of the generation pattern of vRES, the increase of vRES causes the emission factor (EF) to fluctuate on an hourly basis. This fluctuation raises concerns about the accuracy of quantifying emissions w...

This current work investigates the possibility of improving the economic performance of PV in north Europe. The PV system studied in this study is assumed to be connected to the electricity grid. However, because there is a difference between the electricity tariff and feed-in electricity price, adding a battery to such system improves its economic...

This work investigates the possibility of improving the economic performance of PV in Northern Europe. The PV system investigated in this study is assumed to be connected to the electricity grid. However, because there is a difference between the electricity tariff and feed-in electricity price, adding a battery to such a system improves its econom...

Material usage and the related embodied environmental impact have grown in significance in the built environment. Therefore, cities and governments need to develop strategies to reduce both the consumption of resources during usage phase as well as the embodied impact of the current building stock. This article proposes a new component-based buildi...

The DREEAM project consortium is focused on supporting housing companies and cities in scaling up their renovation ambitions. They are doing this through an integrated approach that allows informed decision making before and after renovation, with the aim of increasing energy efficiency.

Due to having airtight buildings, humid or wet walls have become a common problem in the last decades. Some common consequences of having humid walls is the growth of mold, which has a bad impact on the health and the comfort level of the internal environment. There is evidence that the effect of humidity on health is strong. Furthermore, the moist...

European countries face a large challenge in retrofitting their aging building stock, which they need to embark on, in order to reach European Union (EU) energy and emission reduction targets. Despite significant policy interventions, refurbishment rates remain low and the refurbishments that are carried out often do not meet the energy savings tar...

The transformation of urban building-stocks is fundamental to achieve climate change mitigation targets. As the rate of renewal of the building-stock is low, energy efficiency measures need to be applied when renovation is being done. To evaluate the renovation potential of the existing building stock on an urban level, a local approach is needed t...

The construction industry is known to be a key contributor to manmade climate change. Amongst other nations, Japan has a building energy efficiency goal which does not yet emphasize the importance of the moisture safety design of well-insulated building envelopes considering its diverse climatic conditions. The authors developed a vapor-open wooden...

Observations provide evidence that atmospheric greenhouse gases concentration has increased rapidly over last century. This leads to extreme climate changes such as heat waves, rising sea­ levels, changes in precipitation resulting in flooding and droughts, intense hurricanes, and degraded air quality, affect directly and indirectly the physical, s...