Project: Smart-ECO
Project Title: Sustainable Smart Eco-Buildings in the EU
Contract Number:
Duration: Autumn 2007 to Summer 2010
Project Website: www.smart-eco.eu Co-ordinator: BMG Centre for Built Environment University of Gävle, Sweden Client: European Commission, DG Energy & Transport
Summary: Smart-ECO is a community for eco-building that brings together universities, R&D organizations, government bodies and companies that supply and use innovative eco-technologies. This community is used to focus on the global issues of sustainable building so that added value can be created for the evaluation of current and future RTD activities. Activities and policies are mapped to ensure even coverage and gaps are identified for focussing future efforts. Aspects of sustainable development, life performance, ambient intelligence, and relevant stakeholder concerns are brought to the discussion of innovative technologies and their introduction into the built sector.
To achieve the goal, Smart-ECO utilizes a core group that develops proposals able to address the key concerns for consideration by wider stakeholder groups who can refine the strategies for implementation to create smart eco-buildings in the EU. The stakeholder group will be involved throughout the project, and will serve as a reference group vital for the success of Smart-ECO. The project focuses on routes and means that enable the uptake of efficient innovative technologies that in turn enable the building and construction sector to meet the requirements originating from the sustainability concept.
Project Goal and Objectives: Smart-ECO embraces the concept of Eco-buildings and recognizes the results produced by projects conducted under national and EU funding programmes such as FP6. Further, the project aims to bring together a unique network of stakeholders, researchers and developers, educators, trainers, suppliers and users of innovative technologies for the built sector in order to create and apply a generic reference framework against which the new solutions can be evaluated. This reference frame adds new perspectives to the appreciation of innovative technologies and is complementary to already existing and already performed evaluations. These evaluations are not replaced, changed or overruled, but accompanied in a complimentary manner by providing additional perspectives.
To realise this goal the full spectrum of stakeholders in the building sector must play an essential role in the overall activities to be carried out. In order to do this, Smart-ECO will set up a wide-ranging Stakeholder Group at the start of the project so that the relevant stakeholder perspectives can be included in all stages of the project. In this way the results generated will have high probability of being acceptable to the building community. Many events and activities are planned for the Stakeholder Group and this work forms a complete work package (WP5).
To achieve the overall goal for Smart-ECO, three operational objectives are identified:
- Objective 1: Vision and Requirements.
- Objective 2: Elements and their Impacts.
- Objective 3: Communicate Smart-ECO.
The project has been organized into 7 work packages; one work package handles the project management and administrational aspects while the other six work packages are designed to focus on achieving the 3 stated operational objectives. The Smart-ECO work packages are as follows:
- It is essential to allow enough time after project initiation to establish the stakeholder group and to conduct workshops with the group so that the stakeholder perspective can be integrated into the work of WP2.
- The aim of the project is to add value to ongoing research projects. To allow this, Smart-ECO needs to link to these projects at a point in time where these projects have matured sufficiently concerning their approaches and concerning at least preliminary results.
- WP1 Project Management
- WP2 Vision and Requirements
- WP3 Innovation
- WP4 Evaluation
- WP5 Stakeholders
- WP6 Dissemination
- WP7 Exploitation
WP2 is focused on achieving Objective 1. WP3 and WP4 focus on Objective 2 and WP6 and WP7 focus on Objective 3. WP5 supports the work needed to achieve the three objectives by the direct link to the Stakeholders.
Workshops:
Please visit www.smart-eco.eu for upcoming workshops.
For further information, please contact:
Wolfram Trinius
Building Materials Technology BMG Centre for Built Environment
University of Gävle, Sweden
wolfram.trinius@hig.se
Consortium:
BMG, Sweden
CSTB, France
Tallinn Technical University, Estonia
Servitec, Italy
TNO, the Netherlands
SINTEF Byggforsk
FH-Soest, Germany
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Endoenergy Systems Ltd, UK
MACE, UK
Hywel Davies, UK
CIB, the Netherlands