Italians were the first European citizens to experience the lockdown due to Sars-Cov-2 in March 2020. Most employees were forced to work from home. People suddenly had to share common living spaces with family members for longer periods of time and convert home spaces into workplaces. This inevitably had a subjective impact on the perception, satisfaction and preference of indoor environmental quality and work productivity. A web-based survey was designed and administered to Italian employees to determine how they perceived the indoor environmental quality of residential spaces when Working From Home (WFH) and to investigate the relationship between different aspects of users’ satisfaction. A total of 330 valid questionnaires were collected and analysed. The article reports the results of the analyses conducted using a descriptive approach and predictive models to quantify comfort in living spaces when WFH, focusing on respondents’ satisfaction. Most of them were satisfied with the indoor environmental conditions (89% as the sum of “very satisfied” and “satisfied” responses for thermal comfort, 74% for visual comfort, 68% for acoustic quality and 81% for indoor air quality), while the layout of the furniture negatively influenced the WFH experience: 45% of the participants expressed an unsatisfactory or neutral opinion. The results of the sentiment analysis confirmed this trend. Among the Indoor Environmental factors that affect productivity, visual comfort is the most relevant variable. As for the predictive approach using machine learning, the Support Vector Machine classifier performed best in predicting overall satisfaction.

The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) refers to the quality of indoor spaces in relation to the health and well-being of users. IEQ is a holistic concept considering various components of the overall indoor comfort: thermo-hygrometric, lighting, air quality and acoustics. Each component is described through specific performance indicators and benchmarks. The quality of the built environment is assessed at different stages from design to operational phase. The scientific literature reports several case studies related to the assessment of the individual components of the IEQ Tools aimed at the evaluation of the overall IEQ. The paper proposes an assessment tool based on the SB Method (Sustainable Building Method) and the Multi Criteria Analysis for the evaluation of IEQ during the operational phase of a building. Each component of IEQ is analysed through objective indicators and calculation methods. The tool provides two main outcomes: a global score expressing the overall performance of the building from the IEQ perspective; quantitative evaluations of all indoor comfort components through monitoring and measurement of the environmental variables. The above contributes to select intervention areas to optimize indoor design and to identify technologies aimed at ensuring the best IEQ levels for users at the operational stage. The system was applied to an open-plan working space of an office building. Monitoring activities and measurements are carried out to detect the indoor and outdoor variables affecting the IEQ. All aspects of IEQ were analysed and quantified so to evaluate the overall performance of the building and provide data to improve the working conditions.

The world's energy consumption has doubled over the past 40 years and it is estimated that one-third comes from industry. Therefore, an increase of the efficiency in energy use in industries would greatly benefit the sustainability of the factories and consequently of the whole environment and society. A factory is a complex entity constituted by possibly networked plants which produce a set of products performing several processes requiring a set of production resources. All these aspects need to be considered as a whole especially is sustainability is of concern. However, this need implies the collaboration between several actors and tools having remarkably different competences and scopes. This paper presents a holistic framework, named Sustainable Factory Semantic Framework (SuFSeF), aiming at integrating digital models and tools to support the design and management of a sustainable factory thanks to its complete virtual representation. This framework extends the Virtual Factory Framework (VFF), outcome of a European research project, by characterizing the industrial building and considering energy and environmental sustainability of the factory during its lifecycle. Both commercial and prototypal software tools can be integrated in the framework. Specifically, the attention will be focused on tools to support the sustainability assessment during the factory design phase, 3D design tools, and the monitoring of the key energy-environmental indicators during the factory operating phase

In many countries, depending on climatic conditions and the energy performance of buildings, the built stock is highly energy-consuming and constitutes a main source of greenhouse gas emissions. This is particularly true for Europe, where most of the existing buildings were built before 2001. For this reason, EU policies have focused on the Deep Energy Renovation Process of the residential building stock as the mainstream way for its decarbonization strategy by 2050. Based on a broad investigation of seven EU local retrofitting markets carried out within the H2020 re-MODULEES project, this paper defines a holistic methodology for understanding and facing the complexity of the renovation market and its inner constraints. Thanks to systematic surveys and the activation of stakeholders’ core groups (re-LABs), the main market barriers (cultural, social, technical, processual, and financial) were explored. Through a bottom-up clustering approach and vote analysis, a relevance classification of constraints of each pilot market and a detailed scenario of the most relevant market constraints at the European level were provided. This scalable methodology offers the baseline necessary for shaping more effective, cooperative, and tailored-made policies aimed at overcoming the current limitations to the full deployment of the Deep Energy Renovation Process (DERP) across the European markets.

The European Union aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, prioritizing energy efficiency particularly in the building sector. Despite significant policies, such as the EU Green Deal and Renovation Wave initiative, the rate of deep energy renovations remains insufficient, with only 0.2% annually versus the 3% required. Multiple barriers hinder the progress of deep energy renovations (DERs), including fragmentation among stakeholders, the limited coordination of RDI (Research, Development, and Innovation) efforts, and a lack of systemic approaches. The objective of this paper is to illustrate a holistic methodological approach for enhancing the DER market uptake based on transition pathways theory (TPT) and is designed to drive structural evolution in DER markets aimed at overcoming their main current constraints. To this end, five key transition pathways are outlined—namely institutionalization, clusterization, capitalization, digitalization, and exploitation—and are conceived for fostering coordination, integration, promotion, and efficient scaling of innovations along the whole DER value chain. This approach was tested in seven EU building market ecosystems under the H2020 re-MODULEES project, aimed at developing a market activation platform conceived as a digital enabler for next-generation One-Stop Shops (OSSs). This project yielded practical evidence on the potentiality of the TPT frame to strengthen and empower local ecosystems through stakeholders’ engagement and cooperation. The findings suggest that the TPT-based approach tested in re-MODULEES can effectively address structural challenges in diverse DER renovation markets, and for this reason, it may be also tested and extended in other ecosystems across Europe in order to be validated as a strategic approach at the EU level for facilitating the transition to low-carbon buildings.