Rebekka VolkKarlsruhe Institute of Technology | KIT · Institute of Industrial Production
Rebekka Volk
Dr.-Ing.
Head of Research Lab "Project and Resource Management in the Built Environment"
About
62
Publications
57,168
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2,102
Citations
Introduction
Research interests:
- Resource Management and Circular Economy;
- Building and Deconstruction Modelling;
- Building Information Modeling (BIM);
- Sensors and Digitization in Construction and Urban Management;
- Greenhouse Gas Quantification in Value Chains;
- Sustainable districts and their Management (Energy, Water, Landuse, Resources);
- Project planning under uncertainty, Operations Research and
Optimization of Nuclear Decommissioning
Additional affiliations
April 2012 - present
Publications
Publications (62)
In this research, a project planning and decision support model is developed and applied for deconstruction projects to identify and reduce risk and uncertainty in deconstruction project planning. To support decision makers in deconstruction project planning, a proactive scenario construction is developed that considers three main uncertainties in...
During their lifecycles, buildings are changed and adapted to the requirements of generations of users, residents and proprietaries over several decades. At the end of their life time, buildings undergo either retrofit or deconstruction (and replacement) processes. And, modifications and deviations of the original building structure, equipment and...
In the 1950s, nuclear power generation became important and many facilities were built. Today, because of political, technical or economic reasons many reactors are being or will be decommissioned. This highly impacts energy policy regarding future energy supply and the handling of decommissioning, including dismantling capacities, regulatory contr...
Material flows in the construction and demolition (C&D) sector remain high in many countries. But, their changes or reductions are essential for successful circular economies. Existing material flow analyses do not cover regional characteristics, stakeholders and impacts of policy measures and interactions.
We contribute a new, unprecedented way o...
Infrared Thermography (IRT) is a widely used non-destructive method for energy audits. However, plenty of research indicates that the performance of passive thermography is influenced by the method of data collection. Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has been successfully employed for conducting RGB photogrammetry, but the data collected from an inf...
The current awareness of the high importance of urban green leads to a stronger need for tools to comprehensively represent urban green and its benefits. A common scientific approach is the development of urban ecosystem services (UES) based on remote sensing methods at the city or district level. Urban planning, however, requires fine-grained data...
Densely built-up areas are challenged by reduced biodiversity, high volumes of runoff water, reduced evaporation, and heat accumulation. Such phenomena are associated with imperviousness and low, unsustainable utilisation of land and exterior building surfaces. Local authorities have multiple objectives when (re-)developing future-proof districts....
Chemical Recycling of Automotive Plastics by Pyrolysis:
In the past, the amount of plastic waste steadily increased in Germany. Plastic waste from
automotive applications challenges existing mechanical recycling processes due to its material heterogeneity and complexity. However, chemical recycling via pyrolysis has the potential to recycle thes...
Increasing awareness of global and local climate change and the limited resources of land, surface, water, raw materials, urban green spaces, and biodiversity alter the exigencies of urban development. Already perceivable local climate changes such as heavy rains, droughts, and urban heat islands urge planners to take action. Particularly in densel...
Three-dimensional thermal mapping has been commonly used for building energy performance audits. Many researchers have focused on single building audits and modeling multiple buildings in a large district through aerial images. To solve accuracy and efficiency trade-offs, researchers have used data fusion methods to project information from thermal...
This study deals with an extension of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) by constraints on material flows released during the execution of project activities. These constraints arise from limited processing capacities for materials and maximum inventories of intermediate storage facilities. Production scheduling problems wi...
Global plastic production reached a new high in 2019. The high use of plastic leads to a high amount of plastic waste. Thereof, only 33% was collected for recycling in Europe. Plastic production depends on crude oil and energy and has high environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions. The recycling of plastic waste can reduce dependency o...
de Porenbeton ist aufgrund seiner hervorragenden Dämmeigenschaften ein häufig verwendetes Baumaterial für Mauersteine sowie vorgefertigte bewehrte Bauteile und Mineraldämmplatten – mit wachsender Beliebtheit. Altporenbeton aus dem Abbruch und Rückbau von Gebäuden wird derzeit hauptsächlich deponiert. Deponiekapazitäten nehmen jedoch ab und der rech...
In many industrialized countries, a significant number of buildings were constructed prior to any energy-related building construction standards. Today, single-family houses (SFH/pl. SFHs) from this time still have a comparably poor thermal quality. This paper aims to examine and model the incentive effects of the German energy retrofit funding sch...
Since the middle of the 20th century many any buildings were built without any energy standards and still have a comparably poor energy quality. To obtain an overview of the current thermal quality of buildings in a whole city district, it may be promising to work with thermographic images obtained by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Aerial thermogr...
As-is building modeling plays an important role in energy audits and retrofits. However, in order to understand the source(s) of energy loss, researchers must know the semantic information of the buildings and outdoor scenes. Thermal information can potentially be used to distinguish objects that have similar surface colors but are composed of diff...
Das Projektmanagement gewinnt aufgrund kürzerer Produktlebenszyklen und eines schnelleren technologischen Wandels an Bedeutung. Für ein erfolgreiches Projektmanagement ist die Un-terstützung durch geeignete Projektmanagementsoftware erforderlich. Da hierfür zahlreiche Produkte auf dem Markt sind, befasst sich diese Studie mit einer aktuellen Bestan...
Three-dimensional thermal mapping provides many benefits for auditing building energy performance when compared with two-dimensional thermal images that provide only limited representation. However, the current thermal mapping approaches have accuracy and efficiency tradeoffs when modeling large areas using aerial images. Particularly, low-resoluti...
Worldwide, wind turbine stocks are ageing and questions of reuse and recycling particularly of rotor blades become urgent. Especially, rising rotor blade wastes face lacking good recycling options and exact quantification is difficult due to information gaps on the rotor blade size, mass and exact material composition. In a combined approach, the e...
Thermal bridges are weak areas of building envelopes that conduct more heat to the outside than surrounding envelope areas. They lead to increased energy consumption and the formation of mold. With a neural network approach, we demonstrate a method of automatically detecting thermal bridges on building rooftops from panorama drone images of whole c...
Segmenting windows and doors on 3D point cloud models allows for heat loss audits
around these areas. Researchers have collected aerial images to reconstruct 3D models for large
districts, but easily accessible training datasets with data acquired on ground level cannot be directly
used for segmentation on 3D models reconstructed by aerial images....
The chemical industry accounts for 20% of global industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the plastics production is increasing worldwide by approx. 4% annually. To reduce GHG emissions and increase GHG transparency in chemical value chains despite industrial secrets, we developed an approach to estimate the product carbon footprint of chemica...
Kartierung und Bewertung von Grünbeständen und deren Ökosystemleistungen in privaten Innenhöfen – Erkenntnisse einer quartiersweiten Erhebung
Autoren: Denise Böhnke, Stefan Norra, Elias Naber, Rebekka Volk, Alice Krehl, Ronja Becker
Eine Stadt lebt von ihrer grünen Infrastruktur, öffentlichen Parks, Gärten und kleinen Grünflächen. Nachhaltiges F...
Usage of urban data to identify de-sealing potentials in dense urban districts
![PSGS schedule for π1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath}...](profile/Rebekka-Volk/publication/350821809/figure/fig2/AS:1011999328698383@1618290850798/PSGS-schedule-for-p1documentclass12ptminimal-usepackageamsmath_Q320.jpg)
Scheduling of megaprojects is very challenging because of typical characteristics, such as expected long project durations, many activities with multiple modes, scarce resources, and investment decisions. Furthermore, each megaproject has additional specific characteristics to be considered. Since the number of nuclear dismantling projects is expec...
Autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) has a porous structure and excellent thermal properties. Therefore, it is a frequently used building material for masonry units, prefabricated reinforced components and lightweight mineral insulation boards with increasing popularity. Post-demolition AAC is currently mainly disposed of in landfills. Decreasing land...
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced to limit global warming. Plastic production requires carbon raw materials and energy that are associated today with predominantly fossil raw materials and fossil GHG emissions. Worldwide, the plastic demand is increasing annually by 4%. Recycling technologies can help save or reduce GHG emissions, b...
Three-dimensional thermal mapping from aerial images can be used in energy audits. Tie points that define the location of object points in a 3D space for reconstructing a 3D model, also include thermal information, which plays an important role in energy audits. However, it is often harder and less accurate to extract common features and determine...
Dear Colleagues,
please consider submitting your contributions to the Special Issue of the Journal of Engineering Design and Technology "Sustainable and resilient extractive and circular economies under uncertainty".
The submission deadline is 28 February 2021.
We are looking forward to your contributions!
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.co...
Multi-sensor imagery data has been used by researchers for the image semantic segmentation of buildings and outdoor scenes. Due to multi-sensor data hunger, researchers have implemented many simulation approaches to create synthetic datasets, and they have also synthesized thermal images because such thermal information can potentially improve segm...
The commitment of international governments to limit global warming to 2°C has led to an increased awareness and interest in sustainability from various stakeholders. Especially the ecological performances of corporations and their products regarding limiting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) receives increasing attention.
In Germany, almost 25% of th...
There is a great interest in society in making urban districts more sustainable. Sustainable and resource-efficient urban development (SDG 11) is a process that, based on the analysis of the initial situation, leads to the formulation of specific goals and must be planned, accompanied , assessed and managed. Thus, this contribution presents a funda...
In times of fast-growing stakeholder interest in sustainability, the ecological and social perspective of industrial companies and its products is gaining increasing importance. In particular, the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the automotive industry has come to the forefront of public and governmental attention. The transport sector accoun...
A shortage of water leads to severe consequences for populations. Recent examples like the ongoing water shortage in Kapstadt or in Gloucestershire in 2007 highlight both the challenges authorities face to restore the water supply and the importance of installing efficient preparedness measures and plans. This study develops a proactive planning ap...
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced to limit global warming. Plastic production requires carbon raw materials and energy that are associated today with predominantly fossil raw materials and fossil GHG emissions. Worldwide, the plastic demand is increasing annually by 4%. Recycling technologies can help saving or reducing GHG emission...
To manage (natural) resources efficiently, their use has to be measured and assessed. Therefore, a management support tool for city planners and other stakeholders on district level is developed based on requirements (A). The basis is an adaptable set of core and optional indicators that are structured into "fields of interest" (B). This is complem...
![Abbildung 5-7: Kumuliertes RESPOT [%] der 31 wichtigsten Maßnahmen...](profile/Rebekka-Volk/publication/336027231/figure/fig2/AS:807030868680704@1569422561543/Abbildung-5-7-Kumuliertes-RESPOT-der-31-wichtigsten-Massnahmen-zwischen-2018-2030-im_Q320.jpg)
Der vorliegende Schlussbericht des Forschungsprojektes „StAR-Bau“ wurde im Rahmen des Programms Nachhaltiges Bauen (NaBau) der Baden-Württemberg Stiftung erstellt. Das Projekt untersucht aktuelle und zukünftige Stoffströme im Bauwesen von Baden-Württemberg. Dafür wurde ein geeignetes regionales Stoffstrommodell für Gebäude und Straßeninfrastruktur...
Energy use related to buildings accounts for 35.3% of Germany's final energy consumption and nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, deep energy retrofit (DER) has a substantial role in the German energy efficiency strategy. Although many DER measures are economically viable, the pace of DER is below expectations and target value. A few s...
A sustainable economy fulfills societal needs in a fundamentally different way to the current economic system. Improvements to the efficiency of existing technologies or practices appear insufficient for achieving sustainable development within the planetary boundaries. Disruptive, systemic and transformational changes appear necessary in order to...
In the 1950s, nuclear power generation became important and many facilities were built. Today, because of political, technical or economic reasons many reactors are being or will be decommissioned. This highly impacts energy policy regarding future energy supply and the handling of decommissioning, including dismantling capacities, regulatory contr...
In Folge intensiver Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten konnten bisher eine Vielzahl von Techniken und Verfahren zum Rückbau kerntechnischer Anlagen neu- bzw. weiterentwickelt und in der Praxis getestet werden. Verschiedene in der Vergangenheit erfolgreich durchgeführte Rückbauprojekte sowie der Fortschritt bei laufenden Rückbauprojekten belegen,...
By assessing the emissions of greenhouse gases of finished goods over their entire lifecycle, it can be seen that a significant part of the emissions is caused in production and related upstream processes. A strong focus on resource-efficient production techniques could provide possibilities for significant emission reduction in these processes. Th...
Several project management standards (PM standards) support project management (PM) to accomplish project objectives. The selection of an appropriate PM standard is a strategic decision that should have been done very carefully because of its great impact on project success. Since there is a lack of studies which analyse and compare PM standards to...
Several project management standards (PM standards) support project management (PM) to achieve project objectives. The selection of an appropriate PM standard is a strategic decision that should be made very carefully because of its great impact on project success. The aim of this study is to analyse and compare different PM standards and to recomm...
Die Reaktorkatastrophe im japanischen Fukushima im Jahr 2011 führte in vielen Ländern weltweit zu einer Neubewertung der Risiken, die mit der Nutzung der Kernenergie verbunden sind. In der Folge wurde beispielsweise in Deutschland die vorzeitige Außerbetriebnahme von acht Leistungsreaktoren beschlossen und ein Ausstieg aus der Kernenergienutzung zu...
In recent decades, the shortage of natural resources like primary raw materials has increasingly shifted into the focus of public discussion and research. Especially in the resource-intensive construction sector the implementation of a circular economy can strongly contribute to a reduction of primary resource demand. Positive developments can be n...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of literature and methods that can be used for deconstruction project planning of buildings. Furthermore, shortcomings of the identified planning methods are presented and research gaps are identified.
Design/methodology/approach
Requirements to consider for the planning of d...
A considerable share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is caused by the energy consumption for space heating and cooling in residential buildings. In Germany for instance about one third of the end energy consumption is accounted to space heating and cooling of buildings. Consequently, efforts to increase energy efficiency and substitute non-renewa...
Nowadays, due to globally increasing building densities in cities, demolition works are an inherent part of construction. And they are focal activities related to life-cycle-oriented management of construction materials, which aims at drastically reduce the deployment and consumption of primary non-renewable construction materials. To give an overv...
As energetic, health and environmental requirements for buildings are changing, deconstruction of buildings
in the course of retrofits or replacing construction is increasingly important. To plan change measures in
existing buildings, buildings have to be audited manually which is associated with great effort.
In our contribution, we propose and de...
Buildings are characterized by their immobility, heterogeneity and uniqueness. Due to their long lifecycles, buildings undergo several decades and are refurbished, retrofitted, remediated or modernized by generations of users, residents and proprietaries. Some buildings cannot economically be adapted to meet these requirements. The buildings in que...
While BIM processes are established for new buildings, the majority of existing buildings is not maintained, refurbished or deconstructed with BIM yet. Promising benefits of efficient resource management motivate research to overcome uncertainties of building condition and deficient documentation prevalent in existing buildings.
Due to rapid develo...
Questions
Question (1)
How can buildings materials efficiently be classified other than via Raman spectroscopy?
Projects
Projects (13)
The aim of the project is to evaluate urban areas with their buildings and infrastructures with respect to their energy quality. With the help of drone-mounted sensor data the current energetic state of a neighborhood is evaluated. Based on the collected data, energy losses (both heat and cooling losses) are visible on a large scale. Hence, energy saving potentials and potential reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can be identified. Moreover, energy consumption and losses as well as restructuring can be modelled and planned and the achievement of urban climate protection targets can be monitored.
Wind turbines are a decisive component in achieving the goals of the energy turnaround in Germany. The number of onshore wind turbines has more than tripled in the last 20 years. In addition to the numerical development, their continuous increase in size and, closely related to this, the increasing complexity of the material composition, is of great importance. The height of wind turbines and their rotor diameters influence the possibility of a uniform energy yield and allow the development of new areas for energy conversion.
Starting from dismantling, through transport to processing and forwarding of the waste fractions that are as optimal as possible for high-quality recycling, the various process steps are described and evaluated. From this, a conclusive concept for a dismantling, preparation and treatment strategy that is as standardised as possible is derived.
Pilot project "Circular Economy for Plastics"
