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Purpose: This paper aims to highlight the expanding link between facility management (FM) and building automation and control systems (BACS) through a review of literature. It examines the opportunities and challenges of BACS for facility managers and proposes solutions for mitigating the risks associated with BACS implementation. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reviews various research papers to explore the positive influences of BACS on FM, such as support with strategic decision-making, predictive maintenance, energy efficiency and comfort improvement. It also discusses the challenges of BACS, including obsolescence, interoperability, vendor lock-in, reliability and security risks and suggests potential solutions based on existing literature. Findings: BACS offers numerous opportunities for facility managers, such as improved decision-making, energy efficiency and comfort levels in office buildings. However, there are also risks associated with BACS implementation, including obsolescence, interoperability, vendor lock-in, reliability and security risks. These risks can be mitigated through measures such as hardware and software obsolescence management plans, functional requirement lists, wireless communication protocols, advanced feedback systems and increased awareness about BACS security. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior academic research has been conducted on the expanding link between FM and BACS. Although some papers have touched upon the opportunities and challenges of BACS for FM, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of these findings by consolidating existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing urban air pollution is a pressing challenge, prompting the exploration of mitigation strategies such as urban greening. However, certain innovative greening approaches, while promising, may inadvertently incorporate unsustainable elements that undermine their eco-friendly philosophy. In this context, our research focuses on addressing the replacement of a petroleum-based filter substrate in an existing 'green' outdoor air purification system that utilizes 'moss filters', known as a 'moss wall'. This initiative is driven by concerns about microplastic leakage from the substrate and the need to optimize the moss wall system in terms of circularity. This preliminary study presents a crucial first step, aiming to assess the feasibility of developing a circular, bio-based plate as a replacement for the existing microfiber filter substrate. The focus is on the potential of this plate to recycle moss from the system itself as raw material, ensuring structural integrity and the ability to support its own weight. To achieve this goal, a series of controlled experiments were conducted in a laboratory setting using cellulose, corn starch, and metakaolin binders. Our findings indicated that cellulose was crucial for the structural integrity, starch significantly enhanced the sample strength, and metakaolin improved the water resistance. These insights culminated in the creation of a laboratory-scale moss-based composite prototype, with moss constituting more than half of the total mass. This prototype demonstrated promising results as a starting point for a more environmentally friendly and bio-based moss wall substrate. Subsequent research efforts will concentrate on optimizing the binder and fiber composition, evaluating and improving the bioreceptivity and filter properties, conducting outdoor testing, and scaling up the prototype for practical implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart building technologies and building automation and control systems (BACS) can offer a range of additional benefits beyond energy savings, in particular by improving building responsiveness to user needs. Although in recent years these technologies have gained popularity as a means of reducing energy consumption and improving building performance, a clear picture of the role of BACS in providing a wider range of benefits is still missing. This review identifies and collects BACS impacts in office buildings with a special emphasis on improving indoor environmental quality by adapting building operation to changing conditions and guaranteeing feedback and real-time interaction with occupants. The resulting benefits, such as increased employee productivity, fewer occurrences of sick leave, and lower rates of absenteeism are highlighted. Offices represent an interesting field of application, as small improvements in the built environment can have a significant impact on labour costs which are the predominant share of the total operating costs. Furthermore, quantitative relationships between physical factors of the indoor environment and benefits have been displayed where available. This literature review aims at establishing an approach that comprehensively evaluates BACS across their entire spectrum, leading to the promotion of novel business cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reuse of construction components is considered as a higher value process in a Circular Economy (CE) than recycling. However, this is not yet widely adopted as many barriers still prevent the successful integration of the concept. The ISO20887 standard advocates that the implementation of construction standards will benefit circular reuse. Yet, these standards still need to be developed. To better understand the views of the construction sector, a survey was sent to the network of the Green Deal on Circular Construction (GDCC), led by Circular Flanders. The survey (number of recipients = 629, response rate = 16%) investigates the current implementation of Design for Disassembly and the reuse of construction components. Additionally, it investigates the respondents' view on how a further morphological standardisation of components and connections, as well as standardisation of procedures can facilitate this reuse of construction components. The result is a concrete set of action points and corresponding actors who need to take responsibility. The stakeholders point out that there is no legal framework for component reuse. Yet, this framework can only be created through their largescale cooperation to create the needed construction standards that will truly enable the circular reuse of components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is responsible for half of the currently excavated amount of raw materials. In addition, a quarter of all waste in the European Union is construction waste. This construction waste comprises numerous materials that can still be reused or recycled. Thus, a shift to a circular construction sector is necessary. To make this shift, it is vital to enable the measurement of and the progress toward circularity. Therefore, this paper investigates the currently available circularity indicators with regard to the 4 Rs—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover. Subsequently, a comprehensive Circular Construction Indicator framework is introduced that evaluates a construction project according to the three typical construction phases: design, construction, and end-of-life. In this, new partial indicators to assess material scarcity, structural efficiency, and service life prediction should help designers consider these aspects already in the conceptual design stage. Lastly, suggestions for further research are defined to develop further said new partial indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, a vast number of concrete structures are approaching the end of their expected service life. The need for maintenance and repair is high due to the continued deterioration of the existing building inventory and infrastructure, resulting in a large need for concrete repair in the near future. Reinforcement corrosion is the most important deterioration mechanism, causing (i) severe concrete damage (cracking along reinforcement and the spalling of the cover concrete) and (ii) loss in steel section. Therefore, appropriate repair techniques for corrosion damage are the main focus of this review paper. With the European transition towards a circular economy and with sustainable development goals in mind, it is also important to consider the environmental impact along with the technical requirements and life cycle cost. In order to improve the sustainability of concrete structures and repairs over their life cycle, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) should be applied. However, more research efforts are needed in this field for further development and refinement. This literature review tries to adress this need by compiling existing knowledge and gaps in the state-of-the-art. A comprehensive literature survey about concrete repair assessment through LCA and LCCA is performed and showed a high potential for further investigation. Additionally, it was noticed that many differences are present between the studies considering LCA and/or LCCA, namely, the considered (i) structures, (ii) damage causes, (iii) repair techniques, (iv) estimated and expected life spans, (v) LCCA methods, (vi) life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods, etc. Therefore, due to the case specificity, mutual comparison is challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how school buildings can be exploited more efficiently in the future, since, at present, they remain unused for a substantial amount of time. One possibility to tackle this inefficiency, is to involve the local community more closely in usage of its school building. First, a theoretical analysis was carried out to increase the fundamental understanding of the underlying dynamics related to opening school infrastructure to the local community. Second, focus group discussions were organized to research whether involving the local community in the school building was compatible with educational needs. The first highlighted that more extensive building usage could lead to positive social, environmental, educational and economic benefits. In the second, educational experts stressed that they wanted to adopt more innovative and flexible forms of teaching in the future, such as team teaching. Technical directors expressed concerns on safety issues if the local community is to be more closely involved. In the final step, all findings were translated into their technical consequences. From this analysis, it could be concluded that a school building with a high degree of short-term flexibility was the preferred option to reconcile societal and educational needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry consumes over 32% of the annually excavated natural resources worldwide. Additionally, it is responsible for 25% of the annually generated solid waste. To become a more sustainable industry, a circular economy is necessary: resources are kept in use as long as possible, aiming to reduce and recirculate natural resources. In this paper, the investigation focuses on pedestrian truss bridges of the types Warren and Howe. Many pedestrian bridges currently find themselves in their end-of-life phase and most commonly these bridges are demolished and rebuilt, thus needing a lot of new materials and energy. The aim is thus first and foremost to reduce the amount of necessary new materials. For this reason, a design tool will be created, using the software 'Matlab', in which truss bridges can be evaluated and compared in the conceptual design stage. The tool is based on the theory of morphological indicators: the volume indicator, displacement indicator, buckling indicator and first natural frequency indicator. These allow a designer to determine the most material efficient Warren or Howe truss bridge design with user-defined constraints concerning deflection, load frequency, buckling and overall dimension. Subsequently, the tool was tested and compared to calculations made in the finite element modelling software Diamonds. In total, 72 steel bridge structures were tested. From these it could be concluded that the manual calculations in Diamonds in general confirmed the results obtained with the automated design tool based on morphological indicators. As such, it allows a designer to converge more quickly towards the best performing structure, thus saving time, materials, and corresponding costs and energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current contribution gives insight into the Belgian low-voltage electricity mix, used in environmental life cycle assessment studies and modelled following the attributional and consequential approach. Is the electricity mix for Belgium, as available in the life cycle inventory database ecoinvent 3.1, representative for the current electricity mix and the future developments? Studies on this research topic are missing in the literature, especially for this particular geographical and time frame. In this study, data from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity and the Federal Planning Bureau have been used to model the historical and future Belgian low-voltage electricity mix. The environmental impact is analysed for different scenarios: attributional and consequential modelling, historic and outlook data, the domestic electricity mix and the extended mix with import from other countries. The life cycle inventory database ecoinvent 3.1 and the life cycle impact assessment method ReCiPe version 1.12 are used. It was found that the historical attributional mixes are well represented by the ecoinvent 3.1 mix. All other scenario mixes significantly differ from the mixes in ecoinvent 3.1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The identification of marginal suppliers is a key element of consequential LCA. This study investigates how systematically the identification of marginal suppliers can be performed across different products, while maintaining consistent modeling choices. Some products relevant for the Belgian construction sector are taken as a case study.Methods: To gain insight in the current practice of identifying marginal suppliers, 30 recent studies have been reviewed. Based on the findings of the review, a method was proposed to identify geographical market boundaries from trade data and sensitive suppliers from production data. Both retrospective and prospective approaches to anticipate the future effect of a change in demand were taken into account. The method was applied to compute both a retrospective and a prospective marginal supplier’s mix per product. Finally, the effect of the modeling choices on the size of geographical market boundaries and marginal mixes was estimated via regression analysis.Results and discussion: The forecasts and marginal mixes obtained matched with those from the existing literature, although clear differences in results are observed between the retrospective and prospective approach. Deviations from default assumptions in LCA were observed as well, such as large regional geographical markets for cement and aggregates instead of local ones. The statistical sensitivity analysis showed that identifying geographical market boundaries has the largest effect on the final marginal mix and that these markets are relative stable over time.Conclusions: The proposed method and corresponding sensitivity analysis is an attempt to gain insight into the effect of modeling choices in the context of the identification of marginal suppliers for consequential LCA. It can in principle be applied to any product for which trade and production data are available. The proposed method helps to identify marginal mixes on a consistent and transparent way, to improve the robustness of the results in future consequential LCAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades, the construction sector has focused strongly on reducing operational energy consumption. Other types of environmental impact that occur during the life span of construction works, however, have to be taken into account as well. This case study focuses on developing scenarios to improve the environmental profile of new buildings in the Flemish/Belgian context. The study takes into account current energy regulation and investigates the influence of energy scenarios and building type on the environmental profile. A life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) and a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) were carried out for all scenarios, supplemented by a screening life cycle costing (LCC). The results indicate the importance of the compactness of a building, with the best results identified for the terraced scenario. The results are due to the reduced use of materials and, to a smaller extent, a reduction in energy consumption (smaller exposed surface). The results of the energy scenarios show a discrepancy between the LCEA and LCIA. According to the LCEA, passive scenarios are always preferable, but the LCIA results suggest two ways to reach a similar environmental profile. Firstly, by providing a level of insulation based on current regulations complemented with advanced technical services, and, alternatively, by increasing the level of insulation along with standard services. The results of the LCC show a similar trend to those of the LCIA. The results therefore suggest that there are multiple ways to improve the environmental profile of new buildings. Nevertheless, the choice of impact assessment method can have a strong influence on the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale, aims and objectives Appropriate use of diagnostic and treatment modalities are essential for rational use of resources. The aim of this study is to evaluate the use of diagnostic modalities and different treatment options and their economic impacts following an acute ankle distortion resulting from an occupational accident. We evaluated the type-of-treatment impact on the victims' course of recovery as well as its impact on the associated accident costs. Research was carried out in Belgium. Methods An ankle distortion victims' database consisting of 200 cases of (Belgian) occupational accidents during the period 2005–2007 was analysed. Results Patients who were prescribed immobilization or the use of adjuvant support or physical therapy (118 cases) were not employed during a period of 37 days on average, with a mean total cost of 3140.14 Euros caused by the ankle sprain. Patients without any adjuvant therapy (82 cases) were characterized by an unemployment rate of 15 days on average, and a total cost of 1077.86 Euros. Cast immobilization, although its application is not supported by evidence-based literature, was still applied in 36% of the population studied and resulted in the longest average absence of work of 42 days with an obvious significant increase in medical and total costs. Conclusions Our results show a high rate of inappropriate use of cast immobilizations for ankle distortions. From an economic point of view and for the same clinical endpoint (being full resumption of the occupational activities), simple conventional treatment, consisting of rest, ice, compression and elevation at diagnosis with allowance of early weight bearing in the further clinical course, leads to the quickest full resumption of activities in combination with the lowest medical costs, if compared with any other kind of treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every decision-oriented life cycle assessment (LCAs) entails, at least to some extent, a future-oriented feature. However, apart from the ex-ante LCAs, the majority of LCA studies are retrospective in nature and do not explicitly account for possible future effects. In this review a generic theoretical framework is proposed as a guideline for ex-ante LCA. This framework includes the entire technology life cycle, from the early design phase up to continuous improvements of mature technologies, including their market penetration. The compatibility with commonly applied system models yields an additional aspect of the framework. Practical methods and procedures are categorised, based on how they incorporate future-oriented features in LCA. The results indicate that most of the ex-ante LCAs focus on emerging technologies that have already gone through some research cycles within narrowly defined system boundaries. There is a lack of attention given to technologies that are at a very early development stage, when all options are still open and can be explored at a low cost. It is also acknowledged that technological learning impacts the financial and environmental performance of mature production systems. Once technologies are entering the market, shifts in market composition can lead to substantial changes in environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]