This first year of the R2CITIES has enabled the consortium to prepare the groundwork for the district renovation interventions to be performed and demonstrated. This includes defining methods to appropriately combine technologies based on the three pillars of energy efficiency, cost effectiveness and replicability. Much work has also been undertaken with regard to auditing, evaluating and monitoring which are all required for defining a replicable district renovation methodology. As the project embarks on its second year, this groundwork forms the basis for the future commissioning and supervision the energy conservation measures, data acquisition systems and the application of the M&V (measurement and verification) plans at the three demonstration sites. Parallel to this, an ambitious exploitation and marketing framework has been set up in order to ensure market penetration of the most promising products of R2CITIES.
As part of the two-day discussions in Genoa, a specific session was conducted by Spanish partners ACCIONA and Fundación CARTIF, devoted to the concepts of Integrated Project Delivery and Building Information Modelling together with the definition and set up of a District Sustainability Indicators platform (DSI). The Integrated Project Delivery principles underlying the R2CITIES project, as well as the technical level at which all retrofit will be carried out were all examined closely. These two executive levels are supported by two platforms; the BIM platform and the DSI platform. The former stores and manages the information generated by technical stakeholders that participate in the retrofitting project. The DSI platform is designed to continuously monitor the Key Performance Indicators defined at district level in order to evaluate the progress status of the district retrofitting project. This methodology is central to the R2CITIES project in that the underlying goal is replicability to other towns and districts. As Rubén García points out “The second year of the project will be the key for the development at a deeper level of all aspects related to the methodology”.
At the demonstration sites in Valladolid, Kartal and Genoa, preparation is underway for the public grant (Valladolid) or tenders (Kartal and Genoa) which are due to take place over the coming year. These rounds of public support involve the various interventions on the target buildings. The diagnosis activities for concept design have now been completed at the Genoa and Valladolid sites, and are being finalised in Kartal. The complicated and local nature of the legal processes in each country does present a challenge and the coming months will see much painstaking work. The advantage though is the methodology being developed within R2CITIES will be more able to incorporate various scenarios thus increasing its replicability potential.
This progress meeting was also an opportunity for delegates to discover first-hand the Genoa demonstration site known as the Lavatrici district. The Italian partners responsible for the demonstration in R2CITIES showed their colleagues the dwellings in which energy conservation measures will be implemented, the boiler room and the roof level where the photovoltaic system will be installed.
Contact: R2CITIES Communication Secretariat – email: secretariat@r2cities.eu
R2CITES is coordinated by Fundación CARTIF (Boecillo-Valladolid) and developed in cooperation with the following partners: Sociedad Municipal de Suelo y Vivienda de Valladolid SL, Acciona Infraestructuras SA, Onyx Solar Energy SL, Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum of the Steinbeis Innovation gGmbH, D’Appolonia SPA, Municipality of Genoa, University of Genoa, ABB SPA, Officinae Verdi SPA, Istanbul Teknik Universitesi, Municipality of Kartal, youris.com GEIE
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No 314473