Indoor air pollution, an emerging threat recognized by European society, is claiming millions of lives annually. In the heat of current COVID-19 pandemic, elevated exposure to indoor air pollutants due to increased time spent indoors further faces a significant increase in negative effect on both physical and mental health and well-being not only in Europe, but also worldwide. When it comes to indoor air quality itself, serious knowledge gaps remain in understanding complex nature of indoor-outdoor pollution relationships, pollution sources and exposure pathways, health effects of emerging pollutants, ventilation of indoor spaces on wide spatial and long temporal scales. This is mainly because air quality monitoring in European Union (EU) is primarily focused on outdoor air quality, which paradoxically is a result of regulatory target compliances, which is lacking for indoor environments. To increase the resilience of EU for emerging threats of indoor air pollution and to promote living and working in healthy environments, project EDIAQI aims at conducting characterization of sources and routes of exposure and dispersion of chemical, biological, and emerging indoor air pollution in multiple cities in EU. Quantification of the main properties of pollutants and processes that governs its fate in indoor environments will be investigated on two levels: a) the-state-of-the-art, small-scale, high-intensity scientific focus measurement campaigns; and b) long-term, large-scale monitoring of target indoor air pollutants. The chosen project strategy for developing, characterization, and deployment of cost-effective/user-friendly monitoring solutions, together with the-state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation will allow to create new knowledge on sources, routes of exposure, and body burdens of indoor multipollutant.
"The European Union has set a target to develop a sustainable, competitive, secure, and decarbonised energy system by 2050, and the built environment has a major role to play in accomplishing this goal.
The majority of the existing European building stock originates from the period of low requirements on energy performance that followed World War II, and at present about 75% of buildings are highly inefficient, consuming about 40% of total energy produced in Europe. 80% of today’s building stock is projected to still be in use in 2050, but presently only about 1% of it is renovated each year. Therefore, existing buildings have a large potential for energy performance improvement, especially in colder regions. As energy savings are generally proportional to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) requires EU member states to carry out broad renovation programs of existing buildings by 2050 to achieve a highly energy efficient building stock and a carbon neutral economy.
To pursue this ambition European Commission has set the energy performance into strong focus of the commitments in the European Green Deal. As the EU is striving to be the first climate-neutral continent, a separate strategy “A Renovation Wave for Europe – Greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives""1 was published in October 2020 that commits to the twin challenge of energy performance and affordability. It is expected that this initiative will set a vision for the short, medium, and long term to kick-start and deliver different levels of renovations of the existing building stock – private and public, with accompanying financial instruments and mechanisms.
The Renovation Wave Strategy aims to double the rate of building renovation in the EU from 1% to at least 2% annually by the end of this decade. An integrated approach to building renovation means boosting energy performance of buildings by applying the ‘energy efficiency first’ principle, deploying renewables, preparing for climate impacts, deploying urban green and blue infrastructure, and incorporating circular economy, waste treatment and pollution prevention principles. The expected benefits are broad and include lowering energy bills, alleviating energy poverty, increasing resilience to climate change, improving energy security, contributing to human health, safety, and improved indoor air quality, and providing habitats for biodiversity, as well as boosting the construction sector and, in doing so, supporting small and medium size entrepreneurs and local jobs.
Considering the labour intensiveness of building renovation and repairing the short-term economic damage induced by the COVID19 crisis with investing in our long-term future, the Renovation Wave initiative is seen as a major tool for relaunching EU’s post-COVID19 economy. All the money raised through Next Generation EU will be channelled through EU programmes in the revamped long-term EU budget. Here the European Green Deal is planned as the EU's recovery strategy, where the massive renovation wave of buildings will boost economies, bringing local jobs, improving welfare, and resulting in better living conditions for EU citizens. Also, the synergies of the renovation wave with the renewable energy projects will kick-starting a clean economy in Europe.
"
The oPEN Lab project will contribute to full decarbonisation of the building sector by demonstrating the feasibility of promising technologies, processes and social innovations, leading towards positive energy buildings and neighbourhoods and pave the way for wider replication. The oPEN Lab project will demonstrate integrated, participatory and neighbourhood-based approaches by implementing three open innovation living labs in urban environments: Genk (BE), Pamplona (ES) and Tartu (EE). Realising zero-emission buildings in existing urban environments, over the whole life-cycle, will require more than stand-alone technological solutions on individual building level, such as insulation materials and renewable energy installations. A successful Renovation Wave calls for an integrated, participatory and neighbourhood-based approach. Innovative solutions are needed to improve cost-efficiency and overall impact of the measures, fully reaping the benefits of energy efficiency, life-cycle thinking and the integration of renewable and flexible technologies.
DECARBON-HOME provides research excellence in the intertwined and ongoing climate-related and social challenges which
necessitate a major transition in the Finnish housing system. The key challenge to address is to reduce equitably the climate impact of
Finnish housing and construction, which represent approximately 30% of the total GHG emissions and 40% of total energy use.
DECARBON-HOME extends the thinking on the housing system challenges from environmental and social science silos to form a
comprehensive understanding and create novel, human-centered solutions to climate-wise housing, especially via renovations. The
focus areas are urban and rural; the urban focus is on the suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s and the rural focus is on the peripheral areas.
The challenges in these areas result in the most critical buildings regarding climate change mitigation being typically inhabited by
the most vulnerable social groups (e.g. elderly, immigrants and unemployed). These impose new requirements for sustainable building
and housing renovations, including their material, technological and human aspects. Analyzing the pre-conditions for the wider
adoption of innovative solutions, energy overhauls and other mitigation technologies, the project supports and enhances the nation-wide
transition to climate neutral, socially equitable, and inclusive residential communities. To accelerate the transition, better understanding
and mobilization of changes in individual, institutional, regulatory, communication and knowledge sharing practices is needed.
DECARBON-HOME offers a unique, multi-disciplinary basis to understand citizen preferences, social structures, policy-making,
technological innovations and economic frameworks. With solid competence from transdisciplinarity, the consortium is well equipped
to address these questions and create novel, state-of-the-art research contributions in relevant research fields. With high ambition and
enthusiasm toward co-creation and higher communality, several collaborative tools and working methods are employed together with
committed stakeholders. The project enhances the upscaling of climate-wise technologies and practices, including adaptation and
mitigation technologies and sharing-economy solutions. By developing and testing these low carbon and human-centric solutions to
respond to the specific suburban and rural housing problems, DECARBON-HOM strongly contributes to equitable climate change
adaptation and mitigation.
The FINEST Twins project will build a multidisciplinary smart-city Center of Excellence that will match the leading smart city research centres globally and focus on all five key domains of clean and sustainable smart city development: mobility, energy and built environment glued together by governance and urban analytics & data management (research streams).
The FINEST Twins will have a globally unique focus on developing user-driven clean and sustainable smart city solutions that are “cross-border-by-default” in the context of emerging twin city between Tallinn and Helsinki
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas molestie velit nec auctor tempor. Sed sollicitudin enim in leo laoreet venenatis. Donec dictum, erat eu rhoncus egestas, nisl risus bibendum ligula, eget fringilla orci lacus non mi. Vestibulum iaculis, erat in laoreet ornare, metus arcu pretium velit, a porttitor ante erat eget nibh. Nunc elementum vitae sapien et maximus.