HM researcher Dr Ahmed Khoja is working on methods for assessing buildings’ resilience to climate change in the EU project SuPeRBE. This refers to buildings’ ability to adapt to the effects of climate change in order to minimize damage and maintain their functionality. “There are no operational assessment systems and decision-making methods that enable users and decision-makers to assess the resilience of a building and the surrounding neighbourhood to climate change in an integrated manner. We want to close this gap both in existing buildings and in new buildings,” says the project coordinator.
The project initially aims to support all phases of the adaptation of buildings to climate change – from diagnosing the current state to evaluating the results achieved. Khoja and the project team are developing an assessment tool with five Central European regions – Prague, Piedmont Region, Vorarlberg, Sibenik-Knin County and Veneto Region. Authorities and local actors can use it to assess the degree of adaptation of their buildings, districts and communities. In addition to the assessment tool, the decision-making method should optimize adaptation measures based on the relevant EU standard. Both tools will be integrated into an online platform that enables simulations to analyze “what-if” scenarios for buildings and their surroundings using virtual 3D copies of the urban environment. These tools will then be tested in five pilot regions.
Since 2014, Ahmed Khoja has been researching and teaching in the field of building construction and building climate at the Faculty of Architecture at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. His research focuses on sustainable construction, smart city solutions, climate adaptation and urban resilience. He received his PhD in 2024 on the topic of “Towards Bridging the Climate Change Resilience Gap in Building Assessment Systems: An Integrated Framework for the German Built Environment”. Khoja is a DGNB consultant and BNK auditor and leads the CEN workshop on the harmonization of the next generation of energy certificates.
The research project SuPeRBE (Supporting Cross-scale Planning and Policy Readiness for a Resilient Built Environment) aims to develop a digital tool to improve the capacity of local and regional authorities to define, implement and evaluate measures to adapt the built environment to climate change in Central Europe. The project is funded with 1.5 million euros in the Central European Programme and with the international project partners Municipality of Schnifis (AT), iiSBE Italia R&D and Regione Piemonte and Regione Veneto (IT), FeliCITY-Tools Engineering Ltd (HU), Energy Institute Hrvoje Požar and City of Šibenik (HR), Czech Technical University in Prague and Prague 5 Municipality (CZ) and associated partner Comune di Torino (IT) with HM as overall project management and coordination. It lasts from June 1, 2024, to November 30, 2026.
You can read the original article at the link: https://www.architekturblatt.de/klimaresiliente-gebaeude-architektur-an-den-klimawandel-anpassen/