01/11/2024
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
An information system currently being developed by Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Disy Informationssysteme is intended to support local authorities in timber construction planning and climate protection.
Under the title "Holzbau-KIS", Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Disy Informationssysteme are developing an innovative combination of geo and life cycle assessment data for municipal decision-makers. Municipalities could achieve considerable greenhouse gas savings in the construction sector by specifying climate-friendly building materials. The new tool shows the concrete climate protection potential of timber construction for various scenarios in the areas of new construction, renovation, redensification and additions to selected municipalities.
The predecessor project Holzbau-GIS received the Sustainability Award of the Humboldt Initiative, a sustainability initiative of North Rhine-Westphalian universities, on December 4, 2023. It was developed as a prototype based on publicly accessible geodata from North Rhine-Westphalia and local data sets from the city of Menden. It combines specialist spatial data with building typologies, building structure and GHG reduction potential and enables the linking of construction measures with climate protection targets.
Funded until 2026
The further development of the timber construction KIS will now run until 2026 and is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) via the project management agency Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe (FNR). The aim is to be able to quantify the climate protection contribution of such districts as well as individual buildings. According to the partners, the data generated can be used as a decision-making aid, for integration into municipal climate protection concepts and for communication.
Municipalities could set an important course for climate protection through urban planning guidelines, especially if they own the building plots. One example of this is the Prinz-Eugen-Park district in Munich. The city linked the award of an ecological model housing estate within the area to the criterion of high carbon storage, which is provided in particular by wood as a building material. The result was the largest contiguous timber housing estate in Germany with 566 apartments in timber and timber-hybrid construction.
While the timber construction GIS focused on the topics of new construction and refurbishment with timber, in the new timber construction GIS the researchers are adding scenarios for adding storeys, redensification and selected non-residential buildings, primarily municipal and public buildings, with timber. There is also the topic of blue-green infrastructure - the term describes the approach of cushioning increasing weather extremes in climate change by unsealing, creating infiltration and green areas or water-storing elements. The timber construction CIS thus becomes a municipal planning tool for climate protection and climate impact adaptation.
Author: Susanne Harmsen
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