Luís Bragança

University of Minho · Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (ISISE)

A II Jornada Internacional de Construções Sustentáveis: Economia Circular - Ações para um Mundo Regenerativo ocorreu na Universidade de Fortaleza, Ceará, de 4 a 6 de dezembro. Organizada pela Rede CYTED ECoEICO – Economia Circular como Estratégia para uma Indústria da Construção mais Sustentável – promoveu a Economia Circular como prática sustentáv...

ECoEICO - Economia Circular como Estratégia para uma Indústria da Construção mais Sustentável: De la Visión a la Acción en Economía Circular

The construction industry significantly impacts the environment through natural resource depletion and energy consumption, leading to environmental degradation. Circular Economy (CE) material efficiency strategies—such as material reuse, design for disassembly, prefabrication, and recycling—offer promising solutions for reducing resource consumptio...

The implementation of circular economy principles in building activities holds the potential for substantial environmental, economic, and social benefits. Although extensive research has examined the impact of circularity strategies on various aspects of buildings, there is a significant gap in the literature focusing specifically on building compo...

The construction sector is a major contributor to environmental degradation, prompting the need for integrating sustainability into its practices. This need has driven the development of sustainability assessment methods across various scales of the built environment. Simultaneously, the recent emphasis on Circular Economy (CE) principles has intro...

This section is devoted to analyzing the construction industry as one of the significant industries within the economy of any country with a high potential for circularity. According to Huovila and Westerholm [1], the buildings and construction sector is an essential contributor to environmental impacts and wealth creation in society, with social c...

Circular economy (CE) approaches highlight the potential of construction materials to achieve circularity and sustainability in resource-efficient construction systems and industries. Implementing CE at the material level involves factors such as efficiency, durability, waste reduction through recirculation, and replacement, while encompassing crit...

This document serves as the opening chapter of a book that addresses the critical issue of resource depletion in the built environment, illustrating the unsustainable trends in current construction and demolition practices that extensively rely on new raw materials. It highlights the significant impact of the building sector on global resource cons...

The assessment of circularity in new building projects necessitates consideration of diverse factors such as material choice, design strategies, construction methods, operational efficiency, and end-of-life practices. Various tools and methodologies have been developed to aid stakeholders in the construction industry in evaluating these aspects and...

This chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of the intersection between digitalisation and the circular economy (CE) within the construction sector. It underscores the transformative potential of integrating digital tools to advance circularity objectives across managerial, environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The chapter discusses four...

The twin transition driven by European agendas emphasises the dual benefits of integrating digital technologies with green sustainability concepts. In the built environment and construction sector, this integration is exemplified by leveraging digitalisation to enhance circularity in construction processes. This chapter explores this synergy by foc...

The Circular Economy (CE) emerged in the last decade as an imperative path to transition towards more sustainable practices and go beyond carbon neutrality. Applying CE principle in the built environment has been investigated and recent research advocated for positive impacts if the sector embraces the paradigm shift and moves away from linear towa...

The Circular Economy (CE) proposal aims to minimise waste and maximise the use of resources, making it crucial for providing social housing (SH). Incorporating CE principles into SH policies makes it possible to take significant steps towards a more sustainable and equitable future. The cooperative housing movement offers a solution for growing and...

To carry out more efficient and effective projects, those involved in project management in the construction industry seek alternatives to preserve projects' profit and value, manage change, improve communication with the client, and anticipate risks in the face of unforeseen events. In the face of uncertain and ever-changing scenarios, the Agile m...

Wood and bio-based construction products are perceived as a way to use renewable resources, to save energy and to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG)-emissions during production and to store carbon during the entire service life of the building. This article compares the carbon footprint per kilogram of wood products (softwood beams, plywood, oriented st...

Despite state efforts to enhance affordability, access to adequate housing, deemed a fundamental human right, remains a global challenge. Projections indicate a looming housing deficit affecting 1.6 billion people by 2025, necessitating an integrated approach aligning environmental preservation with housing development. Circular Economy (CE) princi...

This open access book gathers the proceedings of the 4th International Conference “Coordinating Engineering for Sustainability and Resilience” (CESARE) & Midterm Conference of CircularB “Implementation of Circular Economy in the Built Environment”, held in Timișoara, Romania, on May 29-31, 2024, as part of the COST Action CA21103. The volume repres...

The transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) stands as a pivotal strategy in reshaping our prevailing consumption patterns towards more sustainable resource management. Within this context, the European Union places a strong emphasis on elevating recycling and renovation rates while reducing dependence on primary resources, with a particular focu...

The construction industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by digitalization and an unwavering commitment to implementing circular economy (CE) principles and sustainability into its core practices. Emerging digital technologies (DTs), such as Material Passports (MPs), Building Information Modelling (BIM) Artificial Intelligence (A...

The circular economy has emerged as a powerful solution to address environmental and socio-economic challenges in urban areas. As cities continue to grow and face increasing resource demands, adopting sustainable practices becomes critical to promote resource efficiency and improve the well-being of urban communities. This study aims to assess the...

The simultaneous evolution of the construction sector towards the circular economy and digitalization is widely recognized and endorsed by both policy initiatives and academic discourse. In this dynamic landscape, research efforts are focused on creating automated tools and models to facilitate the implementation and monitoring of circularity in bu...

This study examines the importance and adoption of circular economy (CE) principles within the construction industry by focusing on stakeholders’ opinions on key CE strategies across different building life cycle stages. The study draws insights from the perceptions of European-based stakeholders who actively participated in the CircularB Workshop...

The efficient assessment of circularity in buildings requires a comprehensive consideration of diverse elements such as material selection, design principles, construction methods, operational effectiveness, and end-of-life management. However, the absence of a consistent methodology poses a significant challenge in circularity assessment, as extan...

Urban system transformation in view of sustainability is fundamental for efficient adaptation and mitigation of challenges faced by cities. Sustainable urban transitions, under the umbrella of circular economy, are key to effectively addressing future challenging scenarios and their impacts. The adoption of nature-based solutions (NBS) for circular...

The urban circular economy is a highly effective approach to both waste management and the utilization of resources. Many cities have already adopted best practices based on circular economy principles. However, implementing such practices requires multi-stakeholder engagement, new business models, and collaboration between cities. Some successful...

This research explores sustainable construction practices focusing on material reuse, specifically reclaimed structural steel and slag. In general, the building stock is not designed for decon-struction, and material recovery for reuse at the end of life of buildings is complex and challenging. The study evaluates the benefits of content reuse thro...

Due to its intricate production processes, complex supply chains, and industry-specific characteristics, the construction industry faces unique challenges in adopting circular economy (CE) principles that promote resource equity. To address this issue, this study aims to delve into identifying stakeholders' opinions and perceptions regarding key CE...

Since the definition and publication of the 2030 Agenda in 2015, addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been pivotal in guiding carbon neutrality and sustainable solutions in urban development. Despite the passage of nine years, tangible successes in achieving the SDGs have been limited, underscoring the critical need for innovative ap...

The construction sector stands as the predominant consumer of cement, steel, and plastic and is accountable for a substantial 55% of industrial carbon emissions. Greenhouse gases and other forms of pollution linked to the housing sector significantly contribute to the adverse environmental impact of the construction industry. This study underscores...

Building construction accounts for a significant proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, raw material extraction, and waste production. Applying circular economy (CE) principles in the building construction industry would considerably reduce these values. However, uptake by the industry is relatively slow, which is largely attributed to sect...

The global food system is currently facing significant challenges that make it unsustainable and environmentally harmful. These challenges not only threaten food security but also have severe negative impacts on the environment. Efforts have been made to reform agrifood systems and align them with the built environment, but emerging obstacles have...

The world’s largest consumer of raw materials is the construction sector, which mostly adopts the linear economy model. Several researchers make an effort to study how to realize a transition in the sector to a circular model of environmental development, applying strategies to preserve the raw resources, maintain materials in use as long as they c...

The focus of project management on processes and activities in the construction sector presents high variability and uncertainty. This article suggests the adoption of agile methodologies with an emphasis on people as an alternative that encourages reflection and anticipation of building maintenance and demolition problems. The objective is to iden...

The adaptability of buildings is considered an essential criterion of sustainability and circularity of the built environment. Change is inevitable in our modern life. Therefore, designing buildings for adaptability and adaptive reuse is urgently necessary to save resources and prevent waste produced by arbitrary demolition activities. The circular...

The recovery and reuse of materials are one of the main objectives of the circular economy (CE) to minimize the environmental impacts of the construction industry. Public policies, citizen cultural awareness, urban mining practices, and analysis of material flows are being increasingly investigated seeking the reinsertion of materials into the econ...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the SBTool PT Urban assessment method can be used together to assess the circular economy in the built environment and promote urban sustainability. In this conceptual analysis, the focus is on developing urban sustainability indicators that can help to assess the circular economy in the built environmen...

Facing the increased pursuit for sustainable buildings, the construction industry has been adopting new project technologies such as Building Sustainability Assessment (BSA) and Building Information Modelling (BIM), providing new potentialities like continuous data storage, optimised building performance and integrated building design. Facing the o...

The Material Bank (MB) of the city of Porto (Portugal) is an emblematic case that operates in the design phase of the rehabilitation of buildings from the perspective of the circular economy, acting as intermediation of information as a strategic resource in favor of the creation of a network of partners for the preservation of the old quarter with...

While promoting a holistic view of cities, sustainability assessment methods and the circular economy concept have gained attention among urban planners and policymakers. Those methods associated with information technologies can enable intelligent solutions to accelerate sustainability goals. City Information Modelling (CIM) can facilitate the ass...

According to the European Green Deal, excessive carbon emissions are the origin of global warming and must be drastically reduced. Given that the building sector is one of the major sources of carbon emissions, results imperative to limit these emissions, especially in a city context where the density of buildings is commonly higher and rapidly inc...

Sustainability assessment methods have gained the attention between urban planners and policymakers since they promote a comprehensive view of the cities. Intelligent solutions, enabled by advances in information technologies, can accelerate progress in achieving sustainability goals. In this context, City Information Modelling (CIM) emerges as a t...

City Information Modelling, CIM, has emerged as a concept for modeling intelligent urban spaces. Analogous to the BIM, but for urban scale, the CIM aims to model city information by integrating the different components of the urban environment. This intelligent model could be used for myriad purposes, such as city planning, calculating the best tra...

Purpose Facility management (FM) is regarded as an emerging issue in civil engineering and is responsible for ensuring the building's expected performance. The purpose of this study is to analyze buildings' current FM processes for educational and high residential segments and propose an FM-building information modeling (BIM) (BIM6D) to understand...

Proceedings do 2º Congresso Internacional sobre Sustentabilidade Urbana e Economia Circular

There is a vast number of multicriteria methods and tools to assess the sustainability of the built environment. The assessment tools may not always be able to reflect the level of sustainability objectively or accurately if lacking the up-to-date and reliable national statistics. Therefore, updating and refining the assessment items is necessary,...

CWA 17939 - TRAIN4SUSTAIN Competence Quality Standard. The construction sector is one of the main drivers of EU’s economy. Despite major efforts in harmonising and standardization of qualification and training procedures across the EU, the competence level of sustainability experts and the underlying training and education contents varies significa...

Urban planning has become an essential tool for regulating the cities’ growth, maintaining the local urban identity and providing a good quality of life for its inhabitants. In Brazil, the master plan is the primary policy instrument for urban development and expansion. It defines the common requirements that designers must follow when preparing bu...

Urban planning is a valuable tool for growth control and city development, both to maintain the local urban identity and provide life quality for inhabitants. To regulate it, local governments have defined standards for a proper city’s growth through municipal and detailed urban plans. Such instruments identify a set of rules which constructions an...

Purpose This research presents the development of a Building Passport for Sustainable Conservation (BPSC) as a questionnaire with a set of 23 core indicators, for a baseline assessment of heritage buildings. The aim of this tool is to identify priorities for future interventions, by recognising the contributions of heritage buildings to sustainabil...

The concept and practice of sustainability in urban planning have gained worldwide significance since the early 2000s and have become increasingly mainstream in the policymaking process. Adopting global frameworks, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and ISO standards, for sustainable communities provides an opportunity to buil...

A growing interest has been expressed in the issue of building adaptability over the past decade, perceiving it as an intrinsic criterion for sustainability. In light of the circular economy (CE) and its application in the construction sector, more attention has been paid to buildings’ design for adaptability (DfA) towards the realization of circul...

This article presents a literature review of Transition Experiments applied to the Sustainable Urban Mobility context from a critical and operative point of view. The moment of transformation that we are living through determines concerns about the decarbonization and compliance with the 2050 Targets and imposes a paradigm shift towards sustainable...

The construction sector is currently challenged by environmental concerns, reducing energy consumption, and optimising the use of raw materials, hence the need to use new technologies and materials that have a better lifecycle performance. Recycling end-of-life materials or using industrial by-products is a solution in which resources are used effi...

Climate change has a strong influence on the energy consumption of buildings, affecting both the heating and cooling demand in the actual and future scenario. In this paper, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate the influence of both the occupant behaviour and the climate change on the environmental impact of the heating and cooli...

The construction sector exerts great pressure on natural resources, and its role in the transition to a circular economy (CE) is fundamental. Despite the growing prominence of circular business models (CBMs), based on strategies of slowing and closing resource flows, there is uncertainty with regard to how to implement them in the construction sect...

The ecodesign methodologies in the design stage enable buildings to be adapted to the needs of users and deconstructed at the end-of-life. Although ecodesign methods incorporate circular economy (CE) principles, they are little explored in projects and constructions. This study analyses how the construction sector approaches ecodesign methods to ac...

Worldwide authorities are increasingly concerned about construction’s efficiency and sustainability, leading to the development of high-performance buildings. However, such facts have shifted a significant percentage of the building life cycle environmental impacts from the operation to the product and construction phases. Thus, the need to evaluat...

Buildings are responsible for several negative impacts on the environment, most of them related to nonrenewable energy consumption, increasing the concern regarding buildings energy efficiency. In this context, computer software has been used to estimate the energy needs of the built environment, and the Building Information Modelling (BIM) methodo...

Our ever-evolving built environment is continuously facing emerging needs for housing, work, health, and mobility, among others. Yet, buildings are usually designed and set up as finished permanent objects, reflecting the one constant scenario in mind of defined form, function, and performance. Since change is increasingly inevitable in our life, e...

The correct specification of glazings for façades can reduce the energy consumption in buildings. The heat exchange occurs through transparent surfaces and radiation reaches the building as light and heat. Therefore, glazings significantly contribute to the heat transfer between outdoor and indoor spaces and act directly on daylighting and thermal...

Due to the time-consuming and complicated process of performing Building Sustainability Assessment (BSA), this is usually incompatible with construction companies’ deadlines. With the emergence of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the construction industry, the opportunity for BSA methods to adopt and benefit from BIM arises. Following a prev...

Population growth, along with a rapid urban expansion, is imposing a heavy pressure on the planet’s finite resources. It is widely acknowledged that the building industry consumes large amounts of raw materials while generating waste and emissions. To set apart economic growth from environmental repercussions, the Circular Economy (CE) arose as an i...

This research applies the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to measure the gap between designers’ intentions towards heritage conservation and the actual design decisions. It aims at contributing to identify which psychological constructs (attitude, norm, perception of control) are hindering the implementation of sustainable conservation approaches...

A growing concern is given to the environmental impacts caused by the construction industry. Waste generation, resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions are the main drawbacks of the rapid urbanization that the world is witnessing. As a response to these pressing issues, policymakers and academia are exploring the concept of Circular Econo...

Geometry modeling is a common approach in pollutant dispersion studies. Block typology is a key element for representing geometries closer to real city environments. However, urban pollutant modeling studies and urban planning processes have different approaches regarding block typology and applied metrics. Therefore, the objective of this work is...