Notas del instrumento ECOE_LBS y viabilidad para realizar un informe

major importance to the occupants’ quality of life, to the ecological footprint in urban areas and to economical assets. This quality has to be maintained and improved considerably in coming decades to support the increasing demands of occupants, to reduce the ecological burden and to contribute to CO₂ reductions. These major challenges require innovative, multidisciplinary scientific research, in which technical engineering approaches are combined with social sciences.

Mission: Our aim is to develop knowledge that will be used to support practices in the building, regen-eration and maintenance of housing in the decades to come. Societal demands require a functional and environmental transformation of the current housing stock quality. The Housing Quality (HQ) programme uses multidisciplinary approaches to provide new scientific insights through a combina-tion of four perspectives: technical knowledge of the health and sustainability of dwellings;

organisational knowledge for the management of housing providers; knowledge of effective policy instruments and enforcement procedures and innovation of building and maintenance processes.

objectives: The objectives include fundamental contributions to the scientific fields that relate to the improvement of housing quality; contribu-tions to the innovation of the educational curricula;

and insights that can be utilised for improving the actual quality of the housing stock. The programme aims to be a frontrunner at national level and to be a key player in specific niches of the interna-tional research arena, particularly in the areas of assessment methods for energy efficient housing, building regulations, and strategic management of social landlords.

Objectives and research area

1

1. sustainable and healthy housing ProDUct

governance

organisation

Process 3. Policy instruments and

enforcements procedures

4. innovation of building and maintenance processes

2. housing management figure 1. four perspectives of housing Quality

QUality

1.2

Increasing the environmental and socio-economic sustainability of the housing stock constitutes the largest investment challenge within the built envi-ronment. Climate change is one of the major global challenges of our time. It has, and will continue to have in the coming decades, a huge impact on how we think about the physical quality of housing in all its dimensions: technique, management, governance and processes. It has recently become clear that the need for a dramatic reduction of CO₂ emissions will, now more than ever, have a major impact on the direction taken with respect to new-ly built houses as well as existing housing stock.

The building stock in the European Union accounts for about 40 percent of total EU energy consump-tion. Energy saving in the built environment has been rated so highly by the European Union that it has opted for a communal approach. In 2000, the European Committee adopted an action plan in line with this to improve energy efficiency, stating that the use of energy in the Union should be reduced by one percent annually until 2010. This was the precursor to the slogan ‘20% in 2020’.

Although crucial to society, transformation of the housing stock is not a simple matter. It is ham-pered by the characteristics of existing building structures as well as a lack of innovative approaches within the construction sector. The cost of failures in the Dutch building industry amounts for more than 10 percent of its turnover.

Total investment costs in homes were 46 billion euros in 2007, which means an annual wastage of 4.6 billion euros. In recent years there have been many problems with construction safety and building physics. In many cases, the faults are not due to a lack of technical knowledge but to carelessness in the building process. Furthermore, the possibility to stimulate sustainable housing management and development through central government regulation is limited. Non-profit and commercial housing organisations have become much more independent and are now major actors

to energy and other quality issues in dwellings, in combination with the evidence on poor perform-ance in the building industry, demands strong policy, management and process innovations.

1.3

The academic discipline of Housing studies the way in which society meets the accommodation needs of households. The position of the academic discipline of Housing within the wider field of architecture is to contribute to the realisation of a sustainable housing stock. In doing so, HQ focuses not so much on the aesthetical quality, but on the quality of housing in terms of safety, comfort, health, energy saving, environmental and socioeconomic sustainability as well as the processes that can improve this quality.

1.4

Within HQ, research questions address the task of improving housing quality. Firstly, in relation to the product: what constitutes sustainable housing stock and how can the sustainability of the existing housing stock be improved? Secondly, in relation to the processes, organisation and governance: how can the actors involved in the housing market con-tribute to the realisation of sustainable housing, and how can the transformation process of the existing housing stock be improved, for example, by ensuring adequate organisation, cooperation and policy instruments? These questions form the basis of the research being carried out within four themed groups: Sustainable and Healthy Housing (product), Housing Management (organisation), Policy Instruments and Enforcement Procedures (governance) and Innovation of Building and Maintenance Processes (processes) - see Figure 1.

table a. research staff at institutional and programme level

2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9

n r f t e n r f t e n r f t e n r f t e n r f t e n r f t e n r f t e

Tenured staff 9 6,6 11 7,1 12 7,3 12 7,7 11 5,5 8 5,3 8 5,5

Non-tenured staff 5 2,9 11 3,7 2 3,4 6 4,7 6 7,3 10 10,7 6 7,8

PhD-students 3 2,4 5 3,2 7 5,6 7 4,4 7 4,6 6 4,1

Guests 0 0 0 2 2 4 5

totAl reseArch stAff 14 9,5 25 13,2 19 13,9 27 18,0 26 17,3 29 20,6 25 17,4

Composition

2

table b. research staff with position in practice

W h o r o l e f i r m / o r G A n i s At i o n W h e r e

Prof. anke van hal PhD Prof. Sustainable Building and

Development Nijenrode Business University Breukelen NL

vincent gruis PhD Prof. Innovation in Real Estate Management

Research Centre Technology &

Innovation Hogeschool Utrecht Utrecht NL

laure itard PhD Prof. Energy and Built Environment The Hague University of Applied

Sciences The Hague NL

Furthermore, an increasing number of contacts are being laid with several regional universities of applied sciences like Utrecht and The Hague where Dr Vincent Gruis and Dr. Laure Itard are part-time lecturers. Some of the academic staff are affiliated with the Netherlands Graduate School for Housing and Urban Research (Nethur).

3.2

The group has hosted a number of guest

researchers from foreign universities and research institutes who have collaborated on joint projects at the University, such as Prof. David Mullins (University of Birmingham), Prof. Sasha Tsenkova (University of Calgary), Dr. Linda Sheridan (Univer-sity of Liverpool) and Dr. Joao Branco Pedro (LNEC – Lisbon). One of our guest researchers,

Prof. Thomson, remained with his group after his retirement in 2007. We have also hosted several Dutch and international Master’s students who con-ducted a thesis as part of our research programme.

3.3