Buildings, along with the processes involved in their design, construction and maintenance, contribute significantly to the current climate crisis. The built environment is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for more than half of total city emissions on average. It is also a major source of air pollution, exacerbating public health issues and environmental degradation.
Addressing the impacts of climate change in the built environment calls for a substantial transition, made more complex by economic and social challenges, especially in Europe. Compliance with an extensive and evolving regulatory landscape adds further challenges, particularly in construction projects involving diverse stakeholders, each bringing their own expertise.
On a broader scale, urban planning and management practices are shifting from a paradigm of expansion and new development to the governance of urban regeneration. Regeneration aims to counter urban decay by promoting citizen engagement in neighbourhood planning, implementing renewable technologies and new mobility approaches, and supporting the adoption of low-carbon lifestyles.
The digital transformation of the built environment and construction sector is a long-lasting trend, yet progress has been slower than in other industrial sectors due to fragmented value chains and the specific temporality of built asset life cycles. However, digitalization is key to reducing the environmental impact, as well as to enhancing value chain competitiveness, and ultimately delivering a high-quality, regenerative environment for EU citizens.
Mission
The mission of the Sustainable Urban and Built Environment group is to support and demonstrate sustainable and circular building design, alongside regenerative and decarbonized city planning and regeneration concepts. The group scales up digital technologies to enable the more efficient design, construction and management of the built environment, resulting in less negative environmental impact, higher efficiency and increased quality of life.
Scope of expertise
The group combines a unique range of interdisciplinary expertise. On one hand, competencies in Building Information Modelling, geospatial systems and IT support the formalization and development of semantic models and technology demonstrators, leveraging combined building- and city-level datasets. On the other hand, domain experts in architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, building energy modelling and construction logistics engage with market stakeholders, collect data, formulate innovative use cases and drive the design of software systems.
From research projects to innovation initiatives with various stakeholders, including policy support, the group develops methods and technologies that facilitate the tr5ansitions of the built environment.
Our key research areas include:
Operational energy consumption can significantly differ from design assumptions, leading to large consumption and carbon emission gaps. The group creates novel methodologies for the detection and quantification of hidden or unaddressed impacts in building operation stages, considering advanced simulation and data-driven techniques.
With people spending up to 90% of their time indoors, ensuring high indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is increasingly important. The group develops novel methodologies for indoor performance simulation, using engineering-based simulation techniques coupled with relevant, data-driven approaches, and applied to design and operational phases.
Climate change compels built environment stakeholders and value chains to reduce energy use and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events by making buildings and infrastructures more resilient. The team develops advanced simulation and design optimization tools, incorporating future weather data to advance new design paradigms.
The group is involved in semantic web development using various ontology models to tackle challenges around data exchange and collaboration amongst construction actors, developing building and city-level digital twins and enabling the digital coupling of IoT data, simulation models and new AI-driven prediction models
The team develops next-generation Geographical Digital Twins (GDTs) for urban and suburban areas to support data-driven planning, sustainability analysis and climate adaptation. Advanced methods combine multi-source data – including IoT, Earth observation, BIM, cadastral and socio-economic datasets – into semantically rich, spatio-temporal environments.
Research focuses on identifying, testing and developing both AI applications and city-related applications;for the design, construction and operation of buildings.
In these areas, we develop key enabling technologies to translate research results into technology demonstrators, allowing our teams to interact with market stakeholders to streamline the valorization of our outputs:
The group advances its technological assets related to BIM, Digital Twins and GIS, with several areas of excellence including the design and development of Decision-Support Systems (DSS) for a broad range of applications, including Design DSS and Building Energy Management Systems. Core competencies include interoperability, semantic models, graph databases, energy modelling and simulation, life cycle analysis and AI-based applications. Applications cover:
Energy efficiency: A Digital Twin system for building testing facilities provides monitoring and control mechanisms to their operators. AI algorithms enable the thermal characterization of building envelopes, offering accurate energy performance modelling and monitoring with reduced reliance on sensors and devices. At the neighbourhood scale, Urban Building Energy Models (UBEMs) integrate building archetypes and renovation scenarios to support strategic energy planning.
Construction management: TwisCo is a web application enabling site managers to manage deliveries in kit form, with all relevant properties (product data);and to plan reliable and optimized deliveries for one or more sites. IRMA is a lightweight embedded AI tool designed specifically for construction sites, which supports waste segregation control in small containers.
Geospatial systems offer a comprehensive view of urban spatial elements, enabling data-driven decision support for authorities, planners and other stakeholders The team develops iGuess, an interoperable and modular geospatial software environment that is evolving into an integrated solution supporting advanced Geographical Digital Twins (GDTs). This technology underpins a wide range of LIST projects involving geospatial data management. Key developments include:
Integration of Urban Data Spaces to enable secure, standardized data sharing among public institutions, private sector stakeholders and citizens.
Support from the iGuess platform for linked data publishing, graph-based querying, and federated access to distributed spatial datasets.
Deployment of advanced GeoAI pipelines, enabling functionalities such as anomaly detection in urban climate sensors, prediction of building energy demand, dynamic land use classification and forecasting of policy impact.
The group has developed MUST (Managing Urban Spaces Together), a digital system combining software and hardware components to support the engagement and participation of citizens in urban planning projects. The platform features a collaborative interface, integrating touch and tangible technologies, that enables groups of citizens to define requirements, explore alternatives and provide input and feedback during participative co-located workshops.
The Sustainable Urban and Built Environment group conducts its RDI activities in close collaboration with industry stakeholders and public authorities, addressing key priorities in sustainable urban development and building performance.
Support for the implementation of the EU Energy Performance in Buildings Directive in Luxembourg, including testing of the Smart Readiness Indicator (in collaboration with the Smart Building Alliance Luxembourg), the formulation of new Energy Performance Certificates and renovation rate forecasting based on building archetypes and citizen engagement, in line with the Renovation Wave.
Contribution to the deployment of material passports in construction, with pilot testing conducted on demonstration buildings (e.g. in collaboration with the Société Nationale des Habitations à Bon Marché).
Development of methodologies for Whole Life Carbon estimation in the construction sector, focusing on digital data workflows (BIM-based calculation workflow tailored to Luxembourg context).
Design of an assessment framework to evaluate the resiliency of district planning, supporting both public and private stakeholders.
Provision of expertise and policy support on mutualized logistics and the management of low-carbon construction sites.
At the European level, the group plays an active role in shaping the research and innovation agenda of the European Commission. Engagement includes participation in the Steering Committee of the European Construction and Sustainable Built Environment Technology Platform (ECTP) and a seat on the Board of the Built4People partnership (B4P). The group is also a member of the BuildingSmart France association.
