Vives is the largest University of Applied Sciences in West Flanders, with campuses in five student cities. By implementing, amongst others things, applied research and expertise in circular and sustainable construction techniques, digital transformation, BIM, spatial planning, monitoring and evaluation techniques, our Belgian partner aims to find the most environmentally friendly solutions.
Urban mining
In CTB, Vives will use expertise from previous projects on circularity, BIM and on the creation of sharing platforms in the rollout of the project, turning buildings into material banks for urban mining. BIM4UrbanMining investigates the potential of urban mining in the building sector through BIM-models (3D models of the buildings and infrastructure).
The role of Vives is to research existing examples of Urban Mining, make a stakeholder mapping and testcase relevant building projects, using their expertise in the following themes:
- Circular economy: mapping material flows and processing in cooperation with SMEs
- Circular construction and energy renovation
- Digital tools/platforms for circular material use
- 3D-scanning of buildings and the transformation to a BIM-model.
Designing innovative techniques
Through the CTB project, the university’s Research Group Green Environment aims to expand its extensive knowledge on circularity in the built environment. The digital tools developed also provide an ideal basis for designing new and innovative techniques to deal more sustainably with raw materials in the built environment.
Vives will deploy this expertise, using this to design even more relevant and future-proof courses. Vives has extensive experience in EU projects, both with a leading and a participating role, acting as a knowledge partner but also monitoring and evaluating pilots.
Oliver Dewolf, Senior Researcher
The Project Team
Emile Vandeburie, Junior Researcher