The fundamental preconditions for climate protection are decided at city level because cities are responsible for around 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, it is becoming ever more widely understood that climate protection can only succeed in the context of a just transition to a circular economy.

At this point the Quadruple Helix Approach comes into play, which is a concept defining the collaboration of academia, industry, government, and society as necessary to ensure that innovative solutions are relevant, feasible and sustainable. Of course, it is not possible to always discuss all aspects in a grassroots approach with all stakeholders. But that’s not necessary if we identify possible contributors from the other strands of the Quadruple Helix as we develop content or concepts for transformation and prioritize the focus groups as part of a knowledge web.

Aspects of research and development should, on the one hand, be integrated into cultural-social habits and, on the other hand, into economic and regulatory capabilities for implementation. Even if we make the transformation somehow happen by solely updating the regulatory frameworks or constantly adding particles for pseudo-business-novelties just for demonstrating action, a transformed built environment as well as economy cannot function under outdated frameworks.

These two assumptions lead to only one logical conclusion: change is no longer enough; we need to transform our economy!

Instantly, we are wondering ” What is the difference between change and transformation?” The answer might be given with the parable of the caterpillar, which lives a ground-bound life, but needs a completely different system when it has transformed into a butterfly – specifically, the aerial one.

This lecture will showcase the three innovation-fields which are interconnected together through the Quadruple Helix approach for the new paradigm of transformation towards a circular economy, focusing on real estate as an example: (1) governance and building culture, (2) economics and sustainable finance, (3) integrated engineering sciences.

Dr.techn. Anna-Vera Deinhammer, October 2023

Biography: Dr. Anna-Vera Deinhammer is a Vienna based Strategist, Lobbyist, and Integral Engineering Scientist. She holds a diploma in architecture and subsequently completed a doctorate in integral engineering in Vienna and Sydney in the field of holistic quality assessment of buildings. All her activities centre the creation of a healthy and liveable built environment. She follows the Quadruple Helix Approach which combines the perspectives of business, science, civil society, and politics. Her work focuses on the circular economy in construction, integral construction research and engineering science, which she is currently contributing as Director for Circular Cities & Regions in the Circular Economy Forum Austria since July 2022. In September 2023, she became elected Vice President of the Association. Since October 2022, she represents the Austrian Sustainable Building Council ÖGNI at the World Green Building Council and the Climate Positive Europe Alliance CPEA in Brussels. In addition, she intensifies the cooperation with Austrian municipalities and is involved in standards development in the “sustainability of buildings” committee of the Austrian Standards Institute ASI.
Since March 2023, she is member of the Global Advisory Council under the auspices ALL Ladies League, regarding SDG Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities for the G100, Group of 100 Global Women Leaders, (G100: Group of 100 Global Women Leaders). Since June 2023, she holds the Endowed Chair for Sustainable Real Estate Development at the University of Applied Scienes for Management and Communication FHWien der WKW. It is the first Endowed Chair, which is 100% financed by the real estate industry.

The strong population growth and urbanization are increasing the global resources and energy consumption. The AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industry is responsible for 60% of the extracted raw materials and generates 40% of the energy-related CO₂ emissions. In Austria, the AEC sector is responsible for 70% of total annual waste – facts that are underlining the importance of implementing of strategies for enhancement of resources efficiency through strategies for circularity. Circular construction aims for, next to achievement of long life duration, to maximize reusability and recyclability. The building stock has great potential to serve as raw material reservoir, however currently there is a lack of comprehensive knowledge about the actual building stock, which is the largest obstacle for reusing and recycling of materials and elements. Further, in order to enhance circular construction, strategies along the value chain along the lifecycle are needed, addressing all of the stakeholders through joint and accessible models and knowledge bases.

At the Department for Integrated Planning and Industrial Building we are developing a comprehensive Digital Platform for Circular AEC – an ecosystem of digital tools and processes for enhancement of circularity along the lifecycle – from design, over operation, deconstruction and finally second life of buildings.

The platform unifies several supplementary tools and concepts, developed in a number of funded cooperative research projects – BIM based Material Passports, as fundament of digital cadaster; integrated BIM based methods for assessment of both resources- and energy performance (project SCI_BIM), and finally a concept for digital urban mining platform for Vienna within research project BIMstocks. This approach represents the continuation of the framework developed in SCI_BIM, which investigated an integrated determination of geometry and material by coupling laser scanning and Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) technology for the semi-automated BIM-Model generation. SCI_BIM demonstrated that GPR technology needs further testing to a) apply it to different building structures and b) build-up a material database, which would significantly increase the efficiency of material determination.

BIMstocks proposes a method for generation of consistent digital documentation of the material composition of existing building stock; and for modeling of the secondary raw materials cadaster combining top down and bottom up approach.

In bottom up approach, we analyzed and scanned 10 different use cases, as representative types of Viennese buildings according to the function and age. Upon the assessment via inspection, invasive methods and finally GPR a catalogue of BIM-Objects for types was generated, which enabled us creating BIM models for all of the buildings of the same typology on the city level. In the top down approach, such material informed BIM models were allocated in GIS model of the city of Vienna, which enabled generation of a GIS-based Urban Mining Platform, which embeds the obtained material and geometry information of the use cases and predicts the recycling potential, the material flow and waste mass.

The innovation of the project is the coupling of different technologies, which enable upscaling from component-level to city-level: scanning technology using Ground Penetrating Radar, application of machine learning for the automated determination of material compositions, and predictive modelling at city-level in the digital urban mining platform. For the first time the uncertainties resulting from the use case samples, the measured values and the extrapolation are estimated.

The result is a concept for the publicly accessible GIS-based Urban Mining Platform, based on building catalogue of typical Viennese buildings, built with GPR scans and subsequent machine learning algorithms, upscaled on city-level; which should increase the knowledge of the material composition of the existing stock and increase recycling rates. As future outlook, new buildings planned in BIM could also easily be integrated in the platform. 

Iva Kovacic, Univ. Prof. Dr.-techn. DI Arch., October 2023

Biography: Iva Kovacic is Professor for Integrated Planning and Head of Institute for Building and Industrial Construction, at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, TU Wien,

She is also Principal Investigator and Member of GCD: Center for Geometry and Computational Design, TU Wien and is lecturer at Jönkoping University, University of Zagreb and Donau University Krems.

Iva’s research focus is Building Information Modelling and Computational Design, as well as Digital Platforms for Circular AEC with Life cycle Assessment and Material Passports.

Together with her group, she is leading and participating in numerous national and international funded research projects, such as BIMmaterial, BIMstocks, CircularTwin, Wohnen 4.0, and in SFB Advanced Digital Design.

Iva is architect by training with practical design experience, and a member of Bavaria Chamber of Architects. She is also Member of ÖGNI – Austrian Sustainable Building Council and ÖGNI Auditor, Member of ASCE and ASCE Computing Division ExCOM, Committee member of eg-ice  (European Group for Intelligent Computing ); Member of SDEWES (Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems) and EPOS (Engineering Project Organisation Society).

Iva is a member and spokesperson of professors in the TU Wien Senate.

Born on 15th of Feb 1973 in Zagreb, Croatia.