The idea is to Build a Knowledge Base, that can be used to trace all activities related to the overall life-cycle of buildings. Since various directives of the EU are related to sustainability, resilience and energy efficiency of building stock, it is necessary to provide a marketplace where various actors can share their offers, including their quality certificates and credentials, and where it would be possible to log and trace every information, activity and change, and use the knowledge to improve sustainability. The project will extend a Digital Building LogBook (DBL), used by a municipality for the management and the administration of its huge set of buildings, with several available and novel data, tools and functionalities, by the help of a Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), an open source blockchain-based solution. DKG software will include specific building-related ontologies, so that the whole knowledge base about the life-cycle of the building can be logged and by that continuously updated, providing mechanisms and interfaces for the relevant stakeholders, to publish, trace, share, tokenize, end even trade models in a market economy. Such information integration can support decisions on optimal adaptation and intervention planning strategies for large populations of buildings. The DBL will be integrated with several new functionalities demonstrated on a dozen of use cases via easily accessible and publicly available APIs. These functionalities will assure a high interoperability between legacy systems and existing tools (e.g. BIM, HBIM), compliance with standards, providing automated warning and alerting system with the help of machine learning tools, digital twinning, and decision-making support. The new DBL based applications will be tested on pilot projects focusing on historical and critical buildings, and on building stocks. The project targets a smarter and more sustainable built environment of the EU providing new market and new value creation.

UPGRADE seeks to broaden the research scope of the involved teams, focusing on tackling key challenges in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. Specifically, it aims to pioneer innovative solutions for repurposing waste geomaterials generated by construction and mining industries worldwide. Waste geomaterials represents half of the waste volume generated in EU. These waste geomaterials generally exhibit poor engineering characteristics that prevent their direct use at construction/mining sites. However, if adequately treated, they could represent an excellent resource for construction purposes with significant money saving and reduction in the environmental footprint, thus contributing to the establishment of a circular handling/management of geomaterials. To achieve this, UPGRADE will develop protocols, software and tools to improve the engineering characteristics of waste geomaterials, and to guarantee the performance level over the service life of geostructures built from waste geomaterials considering site-specific conditions. The fundamental concern of UPGRADE is to promote strategies for sustainable use of waste geomaterials generated by geoengineering activities, and to determine how to turn a waste geomaterial into a durable material, with a positive revenue stream. The originality of UPGRADE's approach is that not only it draws expertise on the environment and geotechnics, but also in computer sciences, geochemistry, analytical chemistry, natural resources exploitation, and in the circulatory economy. We intend to form a multidisciplinary consortium composed of 10 academic and 5 industrial beneficiaries and 6 Third Country partners which aim to address this problem. UPGRADE will create an international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral network of creative and innovative researchers and practising engineers ready to face geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering challenges which arise in the vanguard of technological innovation.

The FRISSBE project will implement new practices at the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute, ZAG, by attracting and maintaining high quality human resources under the direction of the ERA Chair holder. The project will lead to lasting, sustainable structural changes to achieve excellence at ZAG and spread excellence in the region. Designed structural changes aim to achieve excellence in the field of fire-safe sustainable built environments, modify ZAG’s research and innovation landscape, intensify strong cooperation with industry and result in enhanced competitiveness in attaining projects. Changes will be tested in a new autonomous unit, the FRISSBE ERA Chair, and transferable to ZAG as a whole. Structural and dissemination measures are balanced with testing and improving the concept. Structural measures involve improving the workflow, focusing on project preparation and quality management, building a network with stakeholders, and intensifying cooperation with industry. The concept will be tested on a few levels: testing the research enhancement process, building capacity in applying for competitive funds, and building sustainable relationships with industry. Dissemination activities focusing on two-way cooperation with identified stakeholders will enhance ZAGs network and positively contribute to its attractiveness. FRISSBE will have regional impacts in terms of research, education, and engineering. The team will build a strong interactive ecosystem with the InnoRenew CoE and the University of Primorska, as well as other supporters of the project. Added value of the project is amplifying the capacities of the Fire laboratory co-financed with ERDF funds, ensuring conditions to foster excellent research. The project will yield 3 PhD students and 6 post-doctoral researchers. The long-term sustainability of the ERA Chair will be achieved by combining national and EU research and innovation funding with industry funded research and development.