Innovative Energy-Efficient Prefabricated Movable Buildings for Smart/Co-Working: Performance Assessment upon Varying Building Configurations

Maffei, Luigi; Ciervo, Antonio; Perrotta, A.; Masullo, Massimiliano; Rosato, Antonio

doi:10.3390/su15129581

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Temporary offices have been proposed as a possible solution to fight depopulation and the low economic level of small villages and countryside, to limit the concentration of environmental pollutants in urban areas, and to foster slow and more sustainable lifestyles. To this aim, the prefabricated movable building proposed by Maffei et al (2023) was designed and tested under different configurations to guarantee energy-efficient solutions, enhance the local economy, and reduce the environmental impact. However, the possibility of access to new work modalities cannot neglect the importance of understanding the influence the surrounding environment can have on the workers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As part of a wide research project aimed to design and prototype a prefabricated movable building (PMB), different design solutions were studied for smart/co-working and optimized for occupants' wellbeing, energy performance, and integration with outdoor architectural/ historical/landscape elements. Modular solutions of PMBs, selfsustaining in energy use, renewable energy-based, eco-friendly, and flexible in the setup were also proposed (Castanò et al, 2022;Maffei et al, 2022Maffei et al, , 2023. The proposed PMB does not require interventions on the existing heritage for installation and therefore represents a sustainable solution in all historical places subject to regulatory constraints.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the prefabricated movable building design has been tested in terms of energy efficiency, economic benefit, and environmental impact under different configurations (Maffei et al, 2023), it is still not investigated if these proposed temporary office solutions can improve the occupant wellbeing, enhance, or keep constant the general working performances. To this aim, positioning virtually a PMB office in different surrounding contexts and simulating the physical stimuli at the worker position, this study aims to establish if small villages' squares contexts can affect workers' sense of restoration and working performance, through the verification of the following hypotheses: H1: Working in movable offices, such as the PMBs, which are positioned in small villages' squares makes the working experience more restorative than in traditional offices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Exploring the restorative benefits of work in smart working structures on vacations in small villages

Maffei,

Ciervo,

Marzocchi

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

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IntroductionProcesses of redefinition of work, already in place in the pre-pandemic era, with the advent of COVID-19, have become widely required. A “model of work” that uses new technologies and the development of existing ones to improve workers’ performance and satisfaction has emerged. Smart working has changed how people work and, as a result, spaces must also change to support them. The use of prefabricated movable buildings (PMB) could represent an opportunity to create smart (and co-) working spaces in a regenerative contest. Small villages with historical, architectural, and naturalistic elements and slow-life features are potential platforms where vacation and work could merge easily. This paper aims to establish if working in movable offices, like the PMBs, which provide a high level of visual and acoustics interaction with the surroundings, and which is positioned in small villages’ squares, can affect workers’ sense of restoration and working performance.MethodsIn a laboratory setting, in the SENS i-Lab, a videowall and a 3D spatial audio system were used to compare, in terms of restorativeness and self-reported cognitive performance, the effects of a high-rise building context of a City Business District (CBD), i.e. the control scenario, and of two typical squares of small Italian villages with historic buildings, without (HIS) and with water elements (HIS-W).ResultsThe findings of the experimental sessions showed that when working in close contact (visual and auditory) with historical or water elements, where life flows slowly, workers perceived a higher sense of restoration while job performance was unchanged.DiscussionImplementing smart working policies in small villages that encourage the use of energy-efficient prefabricated movable buildings and that offer a high level of visual and acoustic interaction with the surrounding environment may represent a promising strategy to foster the development of the local economy and contrast the depopulation of small villages, improving the worker well-being and the reducing the impact of their activities of the environment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploring the restorative benefits of work in smart working structures on vacations in small villages

Maffei,

Ciervo,

Marzocchi

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…As Table A4 from the Appendix A demonstrates, due to energy-improving technology, this measure decreased between 2010 and 2020. Another opportunity for banks to contribute to green industries is through supporting large-scale renewable energy projects addressed by SDG 7 [58]. This also corresponds to a rising emphasis on renewable energy, as shown in Table A4, which indicates that the growth rate for the renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption has more than doubled in 2020.…”

Section: Regression Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Unfolding the Transitions in Sustainability Reporting

Li,

Rockinger

2024

Sustainability

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The sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been widely embraced by organizations as a sign of their commitment to sustainability. In this study, we develop a novel SDG-related bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model, using the neural network methodology, to determine the thematic evolution of European banks’ sustainability reports. We train this model on the OSDG-CD corpus, which we extend by labeling approximately 10,000 sentences based on SDGs content. The classification capabilities of this model appear to be very effective. Analysts who use our methodology can make faster decisions about the sustainability claims of financial institutions. Our methodology can be extended to non-financial entities. By analyzing the sustainability reports of 98 listed banks covering the accounting periods ranging from 2010 to 2022, we can identify the temporal emphasis of the SDGs. By 2022, climate action had emerged as the most important focus theme. We further validate our classification methodology by establishing a strong correlation between the evolution of SDG prevalence and relevant macroeconomic indicators. We also reveal a difference in focus between various European regions. Finally, we use word counts and k-means cluster analysis to document changes in the objectives of banks by investigating their discussion content.

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“…Solar thermal systems and biomass and district heat networks can also aid in the decarbonization of the building sector. Moreover, the renovation of building envelopes can lead to important energy efficiency enhancements [4,5]. Specifically, the use of insulation and passive houses can lead to an important reduction in a building's thermal needs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Energy Analysis of Different Heat Pump Heating Systems Exploiting Renewable Energy Sources

et al. 2023

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Renewable energy source-fed heat pumps (HPs) may perform up to very high-efficiency standards, offering a promising tool in the wider residential heat decarbonization effort. In this context, this paper investigates different heating configurations utilizing various renewable thermal sources in conjunction with an HP-based system in order to determine the optimal configuration in terms of efficiency, using an existing, fully functioning residential building in Zaragoza, Spain, as our case study, comprising 40 dwellings. Four different HP configurations are investigated:, (i) an air-source system, (ii) a ground-source system, (iii) a dual-source system with solar thermal collectors, and (iv) a triple-source system based on solar, geothermal, and ambient sources. For the purpose of such investigation, detailed dynamic energy simulations are conducted through the use of the INTEMA.building tool (developed in Modelica), applying a multi-objective optimization process that aims at minimizing both the annual electricity consumption and the net present cost. It is demonstrated that the renewable thermally driven HPs are more efficient than the conventional, air-source ones, with the seasonal coefficient of performance increasing by 9.98% (ground source), 4.57% (dual source), and 17.40% (triple source), compared to the air-source heat pump system. Finally, it is revealed (via integrated techno-economic analyses) that the most effective and economical design is the dual source system, while the most expensive is the ground-source configuration. These findings can guide the ongoing design efforts on green residential heat solutions at both research and commercial implementation level.

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Innovative Energy-Efficient Prefabricated Movable Buildings for Smart/Co-Working: Performance Assessment upon Varying Building Configurations

Cited by 5 publications

References 45 publications

Exploring the restorative benefits of work in smart working structures on vacations in small villages

Exploring the restorative benefits of work in smart working structures on vacations in small villages

Unfolding the Transitions in Sustainability Reporting

Dynamic Energy Analysis of Different Heat Pump Heating Systems Exploiting Renewable Energy Sources

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