Digital solutions to foster participative design, planning and management of buildings, neighbourhoods and urban districts (Built4People Partnership)

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Greater engagement of representative groups of end users as well as citizens of the impacted urban context.
• Increased acceptability and uptake of sustainable deep renovation solutions in the built environment.
• Reduced energy and mobility poverty.
• Increase in plans for climate neutral and sustainable, aesthetic and inclusive built environments with enhanced climate adaptation and resilience (e.g. based on nature-based solutions).
• Enhanced climate change adaptation and resilience in built environments.

The transition to a climate-neutral society requires that Europe’s building stock also becomes climate-neutral. At the same time, Europe’s building stock has to become climate resilient. This requires a comprehensive approach beyond individual buildings, namely at the level of neighbourhoods or urban districts. However, the decarbonisation of the built environment and its adaptation to a changing climate and to societal needs in terms of comfort, accessibility, inclusiveness, and aesthetics cannot happen without active participation of the buildings’ users and occupants, individual / collective property owners, and energy communities as beneficiaries of the value chain. Professionals, such as project developers, architects, engineers, building owners, planners and statutory authorities, require solutions that develop, analyse, model, visualise and present a multitude and complex set of information in such a way that facilitates such co-design processes. This topic focuses on the development of digital solutions for a stronger participation of end users, citizens and other relevant stakeholders in the design, planning and management of the renovation of existing buildings, neighbourhoods and / or districts.

Proposals are expected to address one or both of the following points:

• Digital solutions that facilitate participative design and planning through visualisation, analysis and engagement with data that is directly relevant to building users as well as citizens in the surrounding urban area (including e.g. immersive and interactive technologies, Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality, simulations and scenario modelling).
• Digital solutions that allow to analyse and model different scenarios for to-be-renovated buildings, neighbourhoods and / or districts in terms of energy use and generation; users’ health and wellbeing; impact on the energy grid; provisions for active and electric mobility, and sustainable delivery solutions; life-cycle environmental and micro-climatic impacts, and; socio-economic impacts for citizens, building users, owners and occupiers.

In addition, proposals are expected to address all of the following:

• Address aspects of climate-neutrality and climate-resilience, respecting the 'energy efficiency first’ principle.
• Ensure the digital solution complements, builds on and/or uses existing tools (including, where relevant, on conventional, low-tech ones) and standards recognised by the market.
• Engage citizens (seeking coverage of different genders and social characteristics), end users of the tools and other relevant stakeholders involved in the design, planning and management of urban development projects in the development process of the digital solution.
• Ensure the digital solution offers different means to exchange information and provide input that are tailored to the specific needs of laypersons, including vulnerable, minority and disadvantaged groups as well as persons with disabilities and older persons.
• Demonstrate the prototype in at least three real-life urban development projects to apply, evaluate and refine the digital solution and inform its market launch and / or commercialisation strategy.
• Ensure the project’s dissemination activities include actions that contribute to the activities of the NEB Community, and to sharing information, best practices and results within the NEB Lab.
• Contribute to the activities of the Built4People partners and to the Built4People network of innovation clusters.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise (including social innovation), in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘People-centric sustainable built environment’ (Built4People). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on results to the European Partnership ‘People-centric sustainable built environment’ (Built4People) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.