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Although widely recognized as imperative for reducing global emissions and the amount of waste generated by the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector, a large-scale shift from a linear to a circular economy has not yet happened in practice. This paper highlights practitioners’ needs for implementing circularity in the AEC sector in Switzerland, and how digital platforms could support it. We hosted two workshops with industry practitioners in the Swiss AEC sector to find out their needs from academia, government, and industry to implement such a shift. The first workshop revealed a need for digital reuse platforms, so we focused a second workshop specifically on digital platforms. Results from the second workshop made clear the need for better practices of gathering data and integrating platforms. Financial incentives, social innovation, policy measures, and digital tools were also identified as necessary to increasing circularity in the sector. Our findings reveal the promising potential of digital technologies and stakeholders’ networks to better capture data on building products and methods for extending their life cycle.

There is an increased need for tracking building component information through its lifecycle(s) in order to reduce risk and uncertainty for reuse. Existing literature for material tracking focuses primarily on RFID for location tracking on equipment. However, Quick Response (QR) codes were used in this case study because of the low cost, speed of implementation, and accessibility. QR codes were applied to the structural wooden members through laser engraving. This proof of concept analyzes the challenges and advantages associated with using QR codes as the chosen tracking technology as well as engraving them as a permanent fixture., ISSN:2684-1150, Proceedings of the 2022 European Conference on Computing in Construction, ISBN:978-88-7590-226-1

This article proposes a conceptual model to address the structural holes in data sharing between (and beyond) actors in the circular built environment supply chain and monitoring circular economy progress. Current digital innovations such as material passports and Building Information Modelling applications aim at increasing quality and availability of information about materials and their application in buildings to facilitate future reuse or recycling, based on the idea of buildings-as-material-banks. Although these approaches offer great potential to recover value from building materials, they mainly focus on a single building and have a limited capacity to exchange data with other supply chain actors in a timely manner. In this article, we argue that there is a need for an integrated digital infrastructure that expands beyond the industries and countries for enabling a connected global circular economy. Therefore, this article proposes an initial conceptualization of a digital infrastructure towards achieving a circular built environment. The proposed model puts forward three interoperable components: The Data Pipeline, Passport Generator, and Passport Pool, based on emerging technologies such as blockchain technology, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.

The reuse of building materials requires both broad-ranging and detailed information on available building stocks in order to effectively plan for connecting available materials with their eventual reuse in new buildings. Critical information includes component counts, dimensions, and on-site locations. Currently, this information is usually gathered using manual measurements, though contemporary digitization and scanning technology can be used to efficiently gather dimensional and geometric data about pre-demolition sites. The primary digital technologies to automate this data gathering, being photogrammetry and terrestrial Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), have historically shown significant gaps in efficiency and accuracy, while their hardware and software systems are rapidly advancing in capabilities. In this study, contemporary implementations of these methods are compared for their efficiency, interior coverage, and raw accuracy across two case studies with significant geometric differences. These results inform decision-making regarding the appropriate integration of these technologies in industry and identify technologies that require more development for effective use., Proceedings of IASS Annual Symposia, 2022, ISSN:2518-6582, Proceedings of the IASS/APCS 2022 Beijing Symposium: Sustainable Heritage Challenges and Strategies in the Preservation and Conservation of 20th Century Historic Concrete Shells

Intense urbanization has led us to rethink construction and demolition practices on a global scale. There is an opportunity to respond to the climate crisis by moving towards a circular built environment. Such a paradigm shift can be achieved by critically examining the possibility of reusing components from existing buildings. This study investigates approaches and tools needed to analyse the existing building stock and methods to enable component reuse. Ocular observations were conducted in Google Street View to analyse two building-specific characteristics: (1) façade material and (2) reusable components (window, doors, and shutters) found on building facades in two cities: Barcelona and Zurich. Not all products are equally suitable for reuse and require an evaluation metric to understand which components can be reused effectively. Consequently, tailored reuse strategies that are defined by a priority order of waste prevention are put forth. Machine learning shows promising potential to visually collect building-specific characteristics that are relevant for component reuse. The data collected is used to create classification maps that can help define protocols and for urban planning. This research can upscale limited information in countries where available data about the existing building stock is insufficient., CAADRIA, 2, Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA 2022), ISBN:978-988-789-177-2