Marco D'orazio

Marche Polytechnic University | Università degli Studi di Ancona · Department of Construction, Civil Engineering and Architecture (DICEA)

Historic Built Environments (HBEs) in riverine contexts are flood-prone scenarios due to risk factors such as narrow and compact configurations of squares and streets, closeness to sources of risk, relevant population density and possible presence of tourists (unaware of built environment and emergency planning). Differences in urban layout and beh...

Digital technologies can support designers in balancing architectural heritage conservation and performances using multidisciplinary approaches. Fire safety represents a challenging issue, especially in public historical buildings hosting vulnerable occupants, since heavy modifications are often required to facilitate their evacuation. Digital tool...

Among the major sources of disturbance in offices, noise and poor acoustics consistently rank at the top. Moreover, the positive impact which connecting with nature has on individuals is well-documented, yet still not investigated in-depth in terms of office soundscapes. In the present study, a methodology using Virtual Reality (VR) technology is e...

Feedback and requests by occupants are relevant sources of data to improve building management, and building maintenance. Indeed, most predictable faults can be directly identified by occupants and communicated to facility managers through communications written in the end-users’ native language. In this sense, natural language processing methods c...

Building energy models are increasingly used in energy renovation projects to identify the best retrofit strategy. However, a significant discrepancy between real and numerical building performances (“performance gap”) is generally observed, which can lead to an erroneous design of the energy retrofit measures. To reduce this gap, automatic model c...

Biophilic design (BD) approach promotes the integration of nature-based systems into the built environment, with a positive impact on human comfort, health, well‐being, and cognitive functions. In this pilot study, a virtual model of an office room was integrated with nature’s patterns (living wall and potted plants) to create an immersive biophili...

The development and application of Building Management Systems (BMSs) provide different benefits, related to optimizing real-time building monitoring and analysis, understanding users’ behavior toward systems and components, collecting data to reduce the performance gap in building energy models, and also promoting users’ awareness based on automat...

The human-nature connection should be a key component in the design of supportive and comfortable indoor environments. An interest in introducing Nature Based Solutions indoor via Biophilic Design (BD) intervention recently emerged. Related benefits for work efficiency have been identified in lab-studies without the possibility to perform prelimina...

The sustainability of buildings during their life cycle could be increased by optimizing their facility management. In this sense, data-driven approaches could support the improvement of building operation and maintenance (O&M), because they can exploit collected data to provide useful correlations to assess the sustainability performance depending...

Urban microclimate tools are used to estimate the magnitude of urban heat island (UHI) and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. However, acquiring information for creating reliable models is often challenging. Sensitivity analysis (SA) and uncertainty analysis (UA) can be effectively used to acquire information and make informed decisions ev...

Outdoor Built Environment (BE), such as squares, are paramount scenarios in historic cities. They attract many users that can be affected by both Slow and Sudden onset disasters, depending on the combination of possible hazards, BE modification in view of the BE morphological and constructive features, and the users’ vulnerability and exposure. The...

The management of people’s health and safety in cultural buildings has been drastically changed in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. The combined effects of crowding levels and people’s flows are now associated not only with emergency conditions (i.e., evacuation) but also with ordinary fruition issues, given the possible spreading of the virus. Cultu...

Squares in the urban historical built environment are public open spaces prone to the risk of terrorist acts, essentially because they are ideal soft targets and attract significant user densities. Risk assessment methods should consider how users behave in them, both before and during an accident (i.e., the evacuation process). In addition to squa...

Following the “Cognitive Building” concept, in a few years, building automation systems were drastically improved to collect a large amount of user data. However, despite this evolution and the research efforts in the field, human-building interaction remained one of the least mature fields of building science due to the occupants’ complexity and d...

Occupants’ behaviour and strategies to encourage behavioural changes need to be addressed in workplaces to reduce energy consumption. In this study, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was integrated for the first time with an office virtual environment (VE) to investigate the adequacy of the VE in the comfort and behaviour domain, while understa...

Purpose This paper aims to develop predictive methods, based on recurrent neural networks, useful to support facility managers in building maintenance tasks, by collecting information coming from a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Design/methodology/approach This study applies data-driven and text-mining approaches to a CMMS data...

Occupant safety in case of building fires depends on the selection of proper evacuation routes. Today, several passive and active Emergency Wayfinding Systems (EWSs) have been proposed to support occupant route choices. Nevertheless, their effectiveness should be accurately assessed before being manufactured and used. In this sense, Virtual Reality...

Preventive conservation of cultural heritage can avoid or minimize future damage, deterioration, loss and consequently, any invasive intervention. Recently, Machine Learning methods were proposed to support preventive conservation and maintenance plans, based on their ability to predict the future state of the built heritage by collected data. Seve...

Preventive conservation of cultural heritage can avoid or minimize future damage, deterioration, loss and consequently, any invasive intervention. Recently, Machine Learning methods were proposed to support preventive conservation and maintenance plans, based on their ability to predict the future state of the built heritage by collected data. Seve...

During the last decades, virtual reality (VR) has been devoted to supporting research in the architecture, engineering, and construction sectors because of its ability to provide multisensory three-dimensional (3D) environments. However, the use of immersive virtual environments (IVEs) in the design of the built environment is still in its infancy...

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) to enhance research in the building sector is currently emerging, but validation studies are still limited. This work aims to provide a contribution in VR validation on comfort, productivity, and adaptive behaviour research in offices. 104 participants performed one test session in a real or a virtual room, three cog...

An LCA study (based on ISO 14040, ISO 14044, and EN 15804 + A2 standards) was performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of two mortars incorporating recycled materials (composite and carbon dust) from industrial waste as fine aggregates. They were compared to “reference” mortars, with the same strength performance, entirely composed of raw na...

Public Open Spaces (POSs) such as streets and squares, in our cities are characterized by spatio-temporal variations of users' vulnerability and exposure in view of the hosted social, governmental, religious, and commercial functions. Single or multi-risks conditions in POSs can hence vary over time. This work proposes a methodology to perform loca...

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon commonly occurs in cities worldwide and may affect the health of millions of people, especially during heatwaves. To design and propose mitigation strategies, accurate urban microclimate simulation tools are needed but retrieving information for creating reliable models is often challenging. Sensitivity (SA) a...

The sustainable transition to resilient cities is linked to the evaluation of their citizens’ habits. Understanding the Built Environment (BE) use is fundamental to plan effective risk-mitigation strategies, and users’ features and behaviors deeply affect the way BEs are used. Recent studies are moving toward the definition of typological (idealize...

The use of virtual reality (VR) to study the effect of the acoustic environment on performance is still in its infancy, despite its many potentialities due to audio-visual improvement. In this study, a binaural soundtrack was generated and integrated within an immersive virtual environment of an office room, to evaluate the effects of an acoustic a...

Global and local climate change increases the occurrence of extreme weather events such as heatwaves (HW), which in the next years will increase even more in both frequency and magnitude. This phenomenon strongly affects people’s quality of life due to societal, health, and environmental repercussions, but also the building sector, increasing energ...

The effectiveness of care provided by EMTs is directly linked to the ability to ensure a controlled, coordinated, and safe patient flow through the post, especially in case of MCIs or disease outbreak. Currently, there are neither frameworks nor tools to analyze such flow that is often visualized on paper using arrows or simply connected to the car...

Building maintenance needs in public buildings depend on occupant activities and presence. Research should understand how different types of occupant density patterns can be used to forecast the likelihood of specific kinds of maintenance requests. This research adopts a data-driven approach to evaluate experimental-based correlations between maint...

Squares are open spaces of considerable importance in the urban built environment, often hosting functions of social and community importance. In historical centres, these attractive features are added to constructive/morpho-typological factors of outdoor areas and facing buildings, implying more complex contexts for users. Moreover, users’ numbers...

A correct assessment of microalgae growth on porous building materials (i.e.: fired bricks, sandstones and limestones) can provide a useful tool for researchers and practitioners. In fact, it may help predicting the biofouling damage extension and it can assist the experts in a correct planning of maintenance interventions to limit costs. The liter...

In hot-humid climates, porous external surfaces of the buildings with high water sorption capabilities could contribute to the surface temperatures reduction through the release of latent heat by evaporative cooling. On the other hand, compact and low permeable finishing materials could have mechanical and durability benefits respect to the underly...

Floods are among the most destructive sudden-onset disasters affecting worldwide communities and society. Pedestrians can be forced to evacuate affected areas thus being exposed to multiple risks. Outdoor built environment flood risks analyses should be performed through rapid, easy, and sustainable tools to speed up and support risk assessment and...

In the building management process, the collection of end-users' maintenance requests is a rich source of information to evaluate occupants' satisfaction and building systems. Computerized Maintenance Management Systems typically collect non-standardized data, difficult to be analyzed. Text mining methodologies can help to extract information from...

When sudden-onset disasters occur in the urban Built Environment (BE), people must quickly leave the dangerous areas to reach safety. Floods in urban BEs surely represent a critical emergency, especially considering users who cannot evacuate upstairs, such as those placed outdoor. Management strategies focused on the evacuation planning could incre...

In the aftermath of catastrophic events, lightweight construction systems are often used to build temporary emergency architectures. However, if suitable environmental control systems are not present, as may occur in post-disaster scenarios, these buildings provide poor indoor thermal conditions, especially in hot climates, which may jeopardize the...

Prefabricated, lightweight construction systems, thanks to their quicker construction processes, cheapness, higher portability, and adaptability, are increasingly proposed all around the world as emergency architectures (after natural disasters, pandemics, etc.), and as affordable housing solutions in countries with increasing housing demand. Due t...

Virtual Reality application in holistic investigations for energy and cost-saving building design, aimed at humans’ well-being and performance, is still emerging and needs validation. In this study, tests in real and virtual scenarios of an office room were performed, investigating the impact of three walls colours (red, white, blue) and two indoor...

This article presents a novel software tool for the assessments of life-cycle environmental impacts and costs, which is aimed to support decision-making in the design phase of retrofit interventions in the building sector. By combining Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) calculations and functionalities, this tool allows evalua...

Touristic cities will suffer from COVID-19 emergency because of its economic impact on their communities. The first emergency phases involved a wide closure of such areas to support “social distancing” measures (i.e. travels limitation; lockdown of (over)crowd-prone activities). In the second phase, individual’s risk-mitigation strategies (facial m...

The purpose of this study was to provide an empirical failure model predicting the microalgae growth on fired bricks surfaces. It was developed through a numerical fitting of experimental data present in literature. It considered the substrate properties related to biofouling (i.e. porosity and roughness) of different bricks under several environme...

Urban Built Environments (UBE) are increasingly prone to SLow-Onset Disasters (SLODs) such as air pollution and heatwaves. The effectiveness of sustainable risk-mitigation solutions for the exposed individuals’ health should be defined by considering the effective scenarios in which emergency conditions can appear. Combining environmental (includin...

University buildings are one of the most relevant closed environments in which the COVID-19 event clearly pointed out stakeholders’ needs toward safety issues, especially because of the possibility of day-to-day presences of the same users (i.e. students, teachers) and overcrowding causing long-lasting contacts with possible “infectors”. While wait...

Urban floods are becoming more and more intense and frequent allover the world. Extreme events are the main triggering factors of such floods, and merit attention for what concerns the urban planning and emergency strategies. Numerical models aimed at investigating the optimal paths for evacuees escaping a flooded urban environment may be used by l...

The progressive population ageing increases the participation of autonomous Elderly to the community life and their presence in public buildings. Such complex spaces are generally characterized by high occupants’ density, with different users’ types (including elderly) that additionally own a scarce familiarity with the emergency layout. Emergency...

The impact of the users’ behavior on the building performance is largely recognized, especially considering most of common building operation and management (O&M) tasks. Predictions of human-building interactions are essential to improve building efficiency by decreasing wastes and costs connected to O&M while satisfying the comfort level required...

Policies and financial framework aiming to encourage energy efficient building renovations should contribute to “fill” the existing investment gap between Cost-Optimal (CO) solutions, that are more economically convenient, and nearly Zero Energy (nZE) solutions, which have the lower energy consumption, in order to make more convenient to the invest...

Among water-based mitigation strategies against urban overheating, dry mist systems are especially promising, given their local impact, cost-effectiveness and controllability. Intense cooling capacity has been reported under a variety of climates, however, there is a growing need to define specific design guidelines towards an informed and optimize...

Crowds in buildings open to the public can alter the occupants’ safety in different emergency conditions, including those related to a pandemic. In this sense, university buildings are one of the most relevant scenarios in which the COVID-19 event clearly pointed out the stakeholders’ needs toward safety issues, especially because of the possibilit...

This paper investigates the durability of a low-cost construction system named HOMEDONE developed to realize affordable and also temporary housing solutions. The system is based on the assembly of 3D-reinforced EPS panels externally topped off with a multi-layer rendering system. Similar technologies showed durability issues, especially in hot clim...

As well as valuable Building Heritage, hypogeum scenarios often host artefacts such as i.e. graffiti, paintings or low reliefs, but differently to them, they are characterized by very particular microclimatic conditions due to their isolation from the outdoor environment. This way, they are very susceptible to human impact due to visitors’ fruition...

Users’ needs and behaviors can alter the building efficiency, thus leading to significant efforts to support Building Operation & Maintenance (O&M) tasks. This work develops the preliminary concepts of a framework for O&M including users’ monitoring and engagement strategies. In the context of a complex university building, we developed and tested...

This report is one of five deliverables related to WP6 ‘Development and evaluation of guidelines and web-based preliminary assessment tool ‘. The prime objective of WP6 is to develop and to assess written and web-based guidelines and a web tool (including a feasibility study of possible input and output data) for renovation of historic buildings wi...

Touristic cities will suffer from COVID-19 emergency because of its economic impact on their communities. The first emergency phases involved a wide closure of such areas to support "social distancing" measures (i.e. travels limitation; lockdown of (over)crowd-prone activities). In the second phase, individual's risk-mitigation strategies (facial m...

Restarting public buildings activities in the "second phase" of COVID-19 emergency should be supported by operational measures to avoid a second virus spreading. Buildings hosting the continuous presence of the same users and significant overcrowd conditions over space/time (e.g. large offices, universities) are critical scenarios due to the prolon...

Studies on flood risk assessment at urban scale are becoming increasingly oriented towards the use of evacuation simulation models for population’s safety. However, such tools generally simplify human dynamics in floodwater conditions and need data to quantify proper individual's speed. Novel information on the above dynamics is here presented. A g...

Internal insulation is a typical renovation solution in historic buildings with valuable façades. However, it entails moisture-related risks, which affect the durability and life-cycle environmental performance. In this context, the EU project RIBuild developed a risk assessment method for both hygrothermal and life-cycle performance of internal in...

The exploitation of Building Heritage generally leads to sustainability issues in terms of environmental preservation and tourist enjoyment. When these requirements are not jointly respected, occupancy issues can provoke degradation phenomena on indoor environment (i.e., building materials and surfaces with artistic and historical value) or conditi...

The application of internal insulation is a widespread and effective solution for energy renovation of historic buildings. However, it entails quite high installation costs and a certain risk of failure due to moisture-related problems. A probabilistic risk assessment of both hygrothermal performance and life cycle costs can be used to address inte...

Gli ambienti ipogei di valore culturale spesso possono ospitare artefatti, come graffiti, pitture e rilievi. Questi ambienti sono caratterizzati da condizioni microclimatiche aprticolari a causa dell'isolamento con l'ambiente esterno e spesso da dimensione ridotte. La combinazione di questi due elementi richiede una strategia ad hoc che garantisca...

We discuss the research that is being carried out at the Department of Civil and Building Engineering and Architecture (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile e Architettura, DICEA) of the Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM). Over the years the DICEA has steadily focused its attention on resilient environments and buildings, making a gro...

A technological development not threatening natural and human life is one of the core concepts of sustainability. In the construction sector, which is worldwide responsible of a huge consumption of energy and natural resources, thus strongly impacting on climate change, sustainability requires a prompt transition towards eco-friendly, smart and res...

In this paper we have investigated how different materials and thermal masses impact on the performance of ventilated facades with narrow cavities, by measuring the variation in terms of heat flows and ventilation efficiency. While geometry has been widely explored, the role of wall composition has received much less attention. To bridge the gap, t...

The EU Directive 2010/31 abstained from prescribing harmonized and strict requirements for nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEBs), to provide EU countries flexibility and room for maneuver in setting national targets, in view of the impact of local climatic conditions and specific territorial and socio-economical features on heating and cooling needs...

In a post-disaster scenario, temporary lightweight housing solutions are generally used for quickly providing disaster victims with a temporary living place. Developed for limited periods of occupation and typically built shortly with lightweight technologies, people can end up living in these buildings, especially in low-income countries, for year...