Marco Scherz

• MSc MSc PhD
• Research Assistant at Graz University of Technology

None of the indicators underlying the 169 targets of the 17 UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) allow for the tracking of buildings´ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Due to the continuously decreasing GHG budget and the significant contribution of the building sector to GHG emissions, in this study a new indicator and implementation...

Die Frage, welche Maßnahmen erforderlich sind, um Klimaneutralität im Gebäudesektor zu erreichen, bildet den Kern des Projekts Reboot BUILD UP Skills Austria (ReBUSk). In diesem Zusammenhang liegt der Fokus darauf, eine Aus- und Weiterbildungsroadmap bis 2030 in Einklang mit den nationalen und europäischen Klimazielen zu entwickeln. Ziel ist es, da...

Purpose The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the construction industry account for an enormous share of total global CO2 emissions. The numerous construction activities therefore continue to reduce the remaining carbon budget. One lever for the reduction of these GHG emissions lies in the procurement process of buildings. For this reason, a...

In order to exploit the existing GHG emissions reduction potential of a building in the early design phase, approaches and incentives are needed to promote sustainable procurement already in the tendering and awarding phase. The objective of this study is to develop a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based bonus/malus system for the public procurement o...

The construction industry adds a high share to global CO2 emissions and, thus, to the global climate crisis. Future buildings need to be planned, constructed, operated, and deconstructed in a lifecycle-oriented manner so that the building stock represents a capital asset for future generations. The greatest leverages for reducing a building’s CO2 e...

As part of the European Green Deal, the European Commission recently launched the project “New European Bauhaus of the 21st Century” to promote climate-neutral, affordable, and creative design approaches and transform the built environment towards sustainability. Based on a forecasting and backcasting approach, we developed three sets of measures c...

The building sector is responsible for 39% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; thus, it has a significant amount of potential to reduce the effects of climate change. Several active- and passive solutions and strategies have been developed and proposed in the literature. Among them, wood is highlighted as a promising solution to minimize GHG from bu...

Professionals should aim to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by implementing the best road construction technologies to develop low-carbon projects. Although the traffic loads vary over the road length, the environmental impacts are assessed based on the average values of the traffic loads. Consequently, there is a gap between re...

To make efforts for climate protection in the City of Graz (Austria) as effective as possible, the city has established a climate protection fund, from which the KNB (Klimafreundliche und Nachhaltige Baustandards) project emerged. In the KNB project, a new approach was developed on how the city can already request and implement sustainability crite...

One important measure to combat progressing climate change is compliance with and under no circumstances to exceed the decreasing greenhouse gas budget. Every economic sector must strive to make its ecological contribution to achieve this objective. The construction sector is largely responsible for these negative environmental burdens. Although tu...

Purpose With a contribution of 39% to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reducing the environmental impacts of buildings plays an undisputed role in achieving climate goals. Therefore, the development of projects with a low carbon footprint is of crucial importance. Although several active and passive solutions as well as design strategies have been d...

The interlinked character of the 2030 Agenda poses both a challenge and an opportunity in terms of coherent policy making. Accordingly, different methods have been used in approaching the interactions between SDG entities (goals, targets, indicators, policies, external entities) in several recent publications. In this paper, we provide a review and...

In current complex building designs, sustainability assessments are often performed after project completion, with limited impact on building performance which results in missed goals in terms of quality, cost, and time. We address this problem by proposing a hierarchical reference-based know-why model to answer the research question "what is a sui...

Over the past decades, it has become apparent that increasing demands in the construction industry have repeatedly led to project delays and increased project costs in practice. These demands have increased as a result of international and national action plans that have been developed to achieve the climate target paths and, therefore, the necessa...

Air pollution is a global concern, especially in cities and urban areas, and has many implications for human health and for the environment. In common with other industrial sectors, the construction industry emits air pollutants. In scientific literature, the contribution the construction industry makes to air pollution is underexposed. This system...

The goal of this study, commissioned by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Digitalization and Economic Affairs, is to provide a scientific analysis of the economy-wide effects of the enhanced EU 2030 climate targets for Austria. It derives recommendations, including on the necessary framework conditions in Austria and beyond its borders that are need...

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is recognised as one of the most commonly applied methods in the multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) literature. In the AHP, encompassing uncertainty feature necessitates using suitable uncertainty theories, since dealing efficiently with uncertainty in subjective judgements is of great importance in real-...

By limiting global warming to 2°C, the climate goals set by the United Nations in 2015 (Agenda 2030) will clearly be missed. The shrinking of our GHG budget has shown that the implementation of a weak sustainability concept-i.e. equal consideration of all sustainability dimensions (environmental, economic and social)-is not sufficient to meet the r...

According to sustainability research the world has exceeded four out of seven planetary boundaries. The areas of climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle and land use have left the so called safe operating space for humanity. The built environment is one of the major contributors to environmental impacts. Especially the embodied energy dur...

Capturing uncertainty in multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is not a new theme but a largely developing topic which is in close connection with uncertainty theories such as fuzzy set and grey systems theories. Due to growing complexity of construction processes mainly because of implementation of sustainability aspects it would be necessary...

In order to achieve the climate goals, the implementation of sustainable construction is becoming more and more topical in the construction sector. Due to very long service lifes especially in railway projects, the consideration of life-cycle aspects into the early design process is of great importance. Regarding the assessment of the economic pill...

There are many reasons for the implementation of authentication on learning platforms. For instance, it is required for the teachers to identify individual students if the learning platform offers some kind of assessment. In addition, authentication is the base for a successful monitoring of the attendance of the students. Compulsory attendance is...

Aufgrund multikriterieller Anforderungen im nachhaltigen Bauen nimmt die Komplexität in Entscheidungsprozessen zu. Ein begrenztes Bewusstsein für systemische Effekte kann zu früh in der Entwurfsphase von Bauprojekten zu ungenauen und / oder falschen Entscheidungen führen. Derzeit mangelt es an geeigneten Methoden, um einen auf mehreren Kriterien be...

Im Rahmen des vom steiermärkischen Zukunftsfonds geförderten Forschungsprojekts „UNAB“ werden derzeit zwei Forschungsansätze zur Optimierung der Nachhaltigkeit von Gebäuden verfolgt. Ziel des ersten Ansatzes ist die Operationalisierung von Nachhaltigkeitskriterien in der derzeitigen Planungspraxis von Gebäuden. Unter Berücksichtigung der Zielsetzun...

Due to the fact that students are confronted with a growing amount of texts, colours, figures and shapes and due to their ability to process only a limited number of such information simultaneously, it seems to be obvious that efforts should be made to increase the students' attention-levels. This is important because research results have indicate...

It becomes increasingly challenging to follow decision-making processes while designing sustainable buildings as various sustainability criteria must be operationalized to maintain the optimal integral building performance over its whole life-cycle. Because it is difficult to manage the numerous interdependencies between sustainability criteria as...

ingREeS project extends the implementation of the Roadmap established and endorsed under Pillar I Build Up Skills project in Slovakia and the Czech Republic to middle and senior level professionals. These roadmaps identified key measures for setting up a national qualification and training scheme and other measures for ensuring development of skill...

Due to multi criteria related decision making processes during the construction of sustainable buildings, the operationalization of holistic building performance is becoming increasingly challenging. The realization of sustainability aspects in current construction practice calls for - next to precise stakeholder requirements - an integrated and li...

This master thesis gives an overview on how to implement sustainability aspects in construction management. Therefore several stages of a construction projects are considered and their specific requirements for sustainable aspects are listed. A special focus is on the tendering and awarding, because this is a very critical stage for implementing su...