Residential Housing Stock Research Articles

Leveraging digital footprints data for accurate estimation of the residential housing stock in the United Kingdom, 1997–2022

ABSTRACT This paper explores the use of digital footprints data to improve on the limited information available on the size and distribution of the residential housing stock in the United Kingdom over the past two decades. We use a subset of a large dataset consisting of the names and addresses of more than one billion individuals dating back to 1997 (LCRs: Linked Consumer Registers) to calibrate property lifecycle information within an authoritative geolocated address and property dataset. We validate the results of our novel calibration method against official estimates by the UK government covering the same period. We further show that our calibration method, based on individual level data, captures a much larger share of the residential housing stock since 1997 than would have been possible with other available data sources. We argue that these housing stock estimates are fundamental to the development of a comprehensive digital footprints data infrastructure that has the potential to significantly enhance population, migration, and other social statistics in the UK. More generally, this study highlights the benefits of using digital footprints data in refining, calibrating, and extending existing datasets.

Briefing: A brief commentary on facades: a new form of infrastructure

The UK's residential housing stock is undergoing a transformation. In 2017, 20% of the national housing stock comprised flats. Over the next 25 years, it is estimated that flats in medium- or high-rise blocks will account for over 50% of new residential construction. As the rate of high-rise residential development accelerates, new forms of external cladding are being developed that are lightweight and quicker to construct. In addition, residential facades are responding to challenges to improve energy efficiency and safety. Following the tragic events of Grenfell Tower in London in 2017 and the subsequent Hackitt report, there has been an expectation that the construction industry can learn from other sectors. Effective systems of design control and quality assurance already exist within infrastructure, for example nuclear and rail. A cultural shift is imminent where practices from these sectors will transfer into residential. This article considers the current practice of facade procurement within the residential sector, reviews how this will be affected by the Building Safety Act 2022 and draws parallels with other types of infrastructure. It is proposed that sectors that may seem far removed from the residential sector have valuable knowledge and experience to share. The article concludes by considering how greater design control, information capture and assurance will have benefits for addressing the zero-carbon agenda.

Identifying rural high energy intensity residential buildings using metered data

The residential housing stock in rural areas of the U.S. is often older and less energy-efficient than homes built in urban areas. To characterize the energy performance of these buildings and facilitate their energy efficiency upgrades, this study provides a framework for analyzing building energy time-series data to identify buildings with similar temporal energy performance patterns. Using an unsupervised hierarchical time-series clustering algorithm, this framework aims to identify highly inefficient buildings as strong candidates for energy efficiency improvement programs. Weather-normalized electricity and natural gas consumption data from 320 properties in the rural town of Bloomfield, Iowa, covering a six-year reporting period from 2014 to 2019 is used to optimally cluster energy consumption data into two groups, including average and high intensity energy users. To correct the underlying bias of the commonly used area-normalized energy use intensity (EUI) indexes towards smaller homes, the proposed clustering algorithm only compares the EUI of homes with similar floor areas. User types are defined for electricity and natural gas consumption separately to allow for tailored actions and policy recommendations. Accordingly, 5% and 7% of residences in the dataset were classified as high intensity users for electricity and natural gas, respectively. Of the remaining, 88% of homes were classified as average intensity users for both energy types. Only 2 properties in the dataset (less than 1%) were identified to be high intensity users for both electricity and natural gas. Homes classified as high intensity electricity and natural gas users, although smaller in number, were, on average, 44% and 30% more energy intensive, respectively, when compared to similar-sized average intensity consumers. The results also indicated that older homes are generally more likely to be high intensity natural gas consumers while a relatively higher percentage of newer homes were classified as high intensity electricity users.

Building Stability On Permafrost In Vorkuta, Russia

The Infrastructure stability on permafrost is currently an important topic as the Arctic countries are developing climate change adaptation and mitigation programs. Assessing the sustainability of infrastructure facilities (especially in urban environments) is a difficult task as it depends on many parameters. This article discusses the city of Vorkuta, which is located in the northwest of Russia. This city differs from many others built on permafrost because most of buildings were built according to Principle II (The Active Method) of construction on permafrost with thawing soil prior to construction. Assessments of the engineering and geocryological conditions, basic principles of construction in the city, and reasons for building failures, were carried out within this study. The research is based on publications, open data about buildings, and visual observations in Vorkuta. About 800 buildings are in use in Vorkuta in 2020 (43% of what it was 50 years ago). According to the analysis, about 800 houses have been demolished or disconnected from utility lines over the past 50 years (about 250 of these are still standing, pending demolition). Since 1994, the construction of new residential buildings has almost stopped. Therefore, buildings that have been in use for over 50 years will account for 90% of the total residential housing stock by 2040. The effects of climate change in the city will depend primarily on the principle of construction employed and on the geocryological conditions of the district. Buildings constructed according to Principle I (The Passive Method) were found to be more vulnerable due to a decrease in permafrost bearing capacity. The impact of increasing air temperature on some of the buildings built on bedrock (the central part of the city) and some built on thawing soil will be minimal, as other factors are more significant.

Damage protection of earthquake resistant structures by means of damped braces

Supplementary energy dissipation is an efficient technique for the retrofitting of as built framed buildings as long as the loss of capacity due to previous seismic degradation is evaluated properly. Most of the displacement-based design procedure of damped braces only considers the capacity curve of an initially undamaged structure, while the hysteretic energy is accounted for by an equivalent viscous damping. However, structures may be initially damaged by previous earthquakes, so the proportioning of the damped braces should include the effects of the cumulative damage caused by previous loading cycles. A displacement-damage-based design procedure is proposed and implemented by means of a computer-aided tool named DAMPERS (DAMage Protection of Earthquake Resistant Structures). The residual capacity that a building might experience when subjected to more than one earthquake during its nominal life is taken into account. The loss of capacity of the original structure is evaluated by a combined plastic-damage model, obtained as an in-parallel combination of elastic-perfectly plastic and elastic-softening damage mechanisms, and a damage index, accounting for the cyclic damage of each pair of mechanisms. An archetype six-storey reinforced concrete framed building, representative of the Italian residential housing stock constructed during the 1990s, is retrofitted with hysteretic damped braces designed assuming different damage evolution laws during previous earthquakes. Three configurations of masonry infills (MIs) are considered: bare frame, with nonstructural MIs; infilled frame, with a uniform in-elevation distribution of structural MIs; pilotis frame, with no MIs at the ground floor and structural MIs at the other floors. OpenSees is the computational platform for the nonlinear seismic analysis of the unbraced and damped braced structures, with reference to records scaled in line with the hypotheses adopted and considering failure modes of structural and nonstructural elements.

ASSESSMENT OF THE PROBLEMS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF URBAN HOUSING (A CASE STUDY OF OWERRI MUNICIPALITY, IMO STATE)

The high rate of migration, coupled with population increase triggered rapid urbanization. However, a great proportion of the population still lives in substandard and low quality houses in a deplorable unsanitary residential environment particularly in developing countries. Urban and Economic growth have brought about all typical problems associated with rapid urban development resulting in housing shortage both quantitative and qualitative, slums, illegal settlement and squatting as experienced in owerri municipality. These have resulted into many urban and housing problems within the state capital owerri. This study examined the nature of urban growth and housing problems in owerri municipality. Also it tries to examine residential housing stock, identity the nature of housing problems, government policies and programmes in other to address the problems. The pattern of growth was determined using spatial analysis, and the housing problems were identified through questionnaire and field surveys. Findings revealed that the growth of urban housing in owerri municipality increases by 1034.0 hectare which is equivalent to 38.5% which is in line with Maurice (2004). It was also discovered that over a period of time, new settlements have evolved. Also, the construction and expansion of road networks are evidences of urban growth in owerri municipality. KEYWORDS: Development, Urban growth, Housing problems, population, owerri municipality.

Different Management Functions in Housing Operation Practice: Ukrainian Case Study

Abstract The analytical part of the article describes the situation after 1990s, when the residential housing stock in most Central and Eastern European countries was privatized, in poor condition, and required costly major repairs at the expense of new owners, which was impossible in terms of finance. In this situation the building maintenance and operation functions are transferred to private or municipal management companies, or remain executed directly by owners’ organizations. The article examines existing services proposed to customers as residents, not taking account the functions of residents as building co-owners. The authors studied the relevant theories and legislation, comparing the current building maintenance and facility management functions to strategic functions of asset and property management. It was shown that the different interests of consumers and owners should be covered by different functions of professional managers. The obstacle is that the structure of residential housing management companies mixes them in a dual customer and owner body. This creates contradictions between the aim to minimize customer’s expenses and the need to preserve assets and property. A conclusion was reached to separate the ownership and property management of houses.

Heating Energy Consumption and Environmental Implications Due to the Change in Daily Habits in Residential Buildings Derived from COVID-19 Crisis: The Case of Barcelona, Spain

The COVID-19 crisis has changed daily habits and the time that people spend at home. It is expected that this change may have environmental implications because of buildings’ heating energy demand. This paper studies the energy and environmental implications, from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, due to these new daily habits in residential buildings at their current level of thermal insulation, and in different scenarios of thermal retrofit of their envelope. This study has a building-to-building approach by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for the residential housing stock in the case of Barcelona, Spain. The results show that a change in daily habits derived from the pandemic can increase the heating energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission in residential buildings by 182%. Retrofitting all buildings of Barcelona, according to conventional energy renovation instead of nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), will produce between 2.25 × 107 and 2.57 × 107 tons of carbon dioxide. Retrofitting the building stock using energy recovery is the option with better energy and emission savings, but also is the option with higher payback time for buildings built until 2007. The methodology presented can be applied in any city with sufficient cadastral data, and is considered optimal in the European context, as it goes for calculating the heating energy consumption.

Injury prevention among young people in nursing homes: Recommendations following expert consultation forums.

Approximately 6,000 people under the age of 65years reside in nursing homes each year in Australia. These young people in nursing homes are at risk of premature death and preventable morbidity from injuries. Choking and falls are the leading causes of premature deaths in this cohort with reported rates of 44% and 33%, respectively. To develop injury prevention recommendations for young people in Australian nursing homes. This mixed-methods study comprised two expert consultation panels and a follow-up survey. Two expert and stakeholder consultation panels used a modified nominal group technique to formulate recommendations. A short survey was subsequently given to participants to validate responses from the panels and to provide an opportunity to evaluate and rank recommendations. Ten recommendations were formulated for consideration that focused on system-wide reforms. Four were ranked as most important for implementation: education and training for nursing home staff; implementation of National Disability Insurance Scheme; support for coordinated care; and increasing residential housing stock that is appropriately designed. Extensive changes are needed to prevent injury for young people in nursing homes. Implementation should reduce the risk of injury and lead to an improved quality of life for this cohort. This study provides an evidence base for aged care practitioners to improve practice within nursing homes to reduce fatal and non-fatal injuries for young people in nursing homes.

Residential Building Lifespan and Community Turnover

Environmental impact studies within the built environment rely on predicting building lifespan to describe the period of occupation and operation. Most life cycle assessments (LCAs) are based on arbitrary lifespan values, omitting the uncertainties of assessing service life. This research models the lifespan of American residential housing stock as a probabilistic survival distribution based on available data from the American Housing Survey (AHS). The log-normal, gamma, and Weibull distributions were fit to demolition data from 1985 to 2009 and these three models were compared with one another using the Bayesian information criterion. Analysis revealed that the estimated average housing lifespan in the United States is 130 years given model assumptions, although a probabilistic approach to lifespan can yield higher accuracy on a case-by-case basis. Parameters for modeling housing lifespan as log-normal, gamma, and Weibull survival functions are published with the intent of further application in LCA. The application of probabilistic housing lifespan models to community-wide turnover and integration with existing simulations of natural disaster are proposed as potential ways to achieve community sustainability and resilience goals.

On the need to develop strategic directions for the formation of a comfortable living environment based on the needs of older adults

The article presents the results of assessment of the conformity of the existing living environment and identification of features of its development, based on the needs of older adults. The urbanization of society and the aging of the population are one of the factors that have recently given rise to the forms of development of the residential environment, which determine special organizational, managerial, and urban planning decisions for designing the parameters of residential buildings and housing stock, based on the needs of this category of citizens. Strategic tools made it possible to outline the main directions for the development of a comfortable living environment, based on the needs of older adults. The developed roadmap provides for the optimization of the existing regulatory framework for the design of residential areas and the popularization and implementation of new standards for integrated development. A city designed according to standards that meet the needs of various categories of citizens determines their choice of alternative social models of the living environment.

Redrawing of a Housing Market: Insurance Payouts and Housing Market Recovery in the Wake of the Christchurch Earthquake of 2011

On the 22nd of February 2011, much of the residential housing stock in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, was damaged by an unusually destructive earthquake. Almost all of the houses were insured. We ask whether insurance was able to mitigate the damage adequately, or whether the damage from the earthquake, and the associated insurance payments, led to a spatial re-ordering of the housing market in the city. We find a negative correlation between insurance pay-outs and house prices at the local level. We also uncover evidence that suggests that the mechanism behind this result is that in some cases houses were not fixed (i.e., owners having pocketed the payments) - indeed, insurance claims that were actively repaired (rather than paid directly) did not lead to any relative deterioration in prices. We use a genetic machine-learning algorithm which aims to improve on a standard hedonic model, and identify the dynamics of the housing market in the city, and three data sets: All housing market transactions, all earthquake insurance claims submitted to the public insurer, and all of the local authority’s building-consents data. Our results are important not only because the utility of catastrophe insurance is often questioned, but also because understanding what happens to property markets after disasters should be part of the overall assessment of the impact of the disaster itself. Without a quantification of these impacts, it is difficult to design policies that will optimally try to prevent or ameliorate disaster impacts.

Predicting Postdisaster Residential Housing Reconstruction Based on Market Resources

AbstractMultiple billion-dollar disaster events occurred throughout 2017, illustrating the increasing vulnerability of the US residential housing stock to widespread damages associated with disaste...

On the Application of Forecasting Methods for a Sustainable Reduction in Uninhabitable Residential Housing Stock

On the Application of Forecasting Methods for a Sustainable Reduction in Uninhabitable Residential Housing Stock

Energy assessment of hybrid heat pump systems as a retrofit measure in residential housing stock

Hybrid electric-gas heat pump systems are a possible retrofit option in older residential buildings. Older buildings can be challenging to retrofit and in this context hybrid systems can offer an intermediate route to decarbonisation of building heating energy demand. This is especially the case, where deep retrofit measures coupled with monovalent electric heat pump systems may not be feasible from an economic perspective. The aim of the current paper is to examine the suitability of a hybrid electric-gas heat pump system in comparison to electric heat pump systems as a retrofit measure for Irish housing stock and to benchmark both options against existing fossil fuel baseline systems. A detailed building energy model of a residential dwelling was developed and calibrated to within acceptable ASHRAE standards. An energy assessment was carried out which investigates each retrofit scenario. Key findings include: (i) both the all-electric and hybrid heat pump systems deliver primary energy savings compared to the fossil fuel baseline systems, (ii) hybrid systems attain higher primary energy savings compared to all-electric heat pump, where the hybrid system incorporates flexible delivery temperatures compared to a fixed delivery temperature tor the all-electric heat pump system.

Accounting for climate variability in vapor intrusion assessments

ABSTRACTThe distribution of the subslab soil gas attenuation factor α for residential houses was simulated using a mathematical relationship that quantifies the influence of stack and wind effects on vapor intrusion. The simulations presented in this article account for variations in leak distribution on the building envelope, effective leakage area distribution in the U.S. residential housing stock, and temperature and wind speed conditions for 20 U.S. cities in seven temperature-based climate zones. For the most air-tight type of houses (“energy-efficient”) in these climate zones, the 95th percentile of the annual mean α ranges from 0.001 to 0.004 as the annual mean temperature goes from 20°C to 3°C. The less air-tight types of houses (“low-income” and “conventional”) have α distributions with lower values. Utility of the simulations in assessing short-term vapor intrusion exposures is also demonstrated by constructing distributions of the maximum 21-day average for the year. The 95th percentile of these short-term α distributions for energy-efficient houses ranges from 0.002 to 0.005. The results presented in this article support the development of vapor intrusion screening levels that are based on values of α appropriate for a climate zone and housing type.

From INA-Casa to Social Housing. But what kind of innovation are we talking about?

The contribution, starting from the comparison between two of the most important Italian periods of residential building construction for public and social purposes, INA-Casa (1949-1963), and the recent local Social Housing experiments, raises the question as to whether the way to respond to the need of housing for the rent is still building new districts or whether, in the face of the need not to occupy further land, the most innovative solutions are rather to be sought in the renovation of existing housing stock; in the reconversion of abandoned buildings into residences; in the experimentation of self-construction practices of renovation for the empty and disused public residential housing stock. In this regard, some experiments have been successfully launched in our country.

Introduction of a Methodology for Deep Energy Retrofitting of Post-War Residential Buildings in Central Europe to Zero Energy Level

Buildings are responsible for 35% of greenhouse gas emissions released in Europe. The highest potential for reduction of the environmental impacts is in the existing buildings' energy efficiency improvement. The paper introduces a development of new methodology for a rapid deep energy retrofitting of existing buildings applicable to residential housing stock in Central Europe. It briefly describes the steps from production of building information model of existing building to complete renovation. It presents experience from pre-production phases on a case study from the Czech Republic. Technical and non-technical barriers to be solved in the near future are summarised in the discussion.

Evolution of earthquake losses in Portuguese residential building stock

The evolution of the expected earthquake losses in different Portuguese regions was studied in order to determine whether the natural regeneration of buildings could contribute to the mitigation of seismic risk, although the building exposure has increased over time in most analysed regions. To achieve this goal, five inter-related risk indicators were estimated, based on the Portuguese censuses’ surveys of residential buildings and inhabitants obtained in two different moments in time: 2001 and 2011. The FEMA (2008) approach was used to estimate the risk indicators, i.e., the Annualized Economic and Human earthquake Losses, either in absolute terms or normalised by building and population exposure. This study offers a perspective of the seismic risk in the Portuguese mainland, provides a comparison of risk levels between different epochs, and analyses the obtained results in order to compare the risk among Portuguese regions. It is important to mention that the comparison of economic losses based on the building stocks surveyed in 2001 and in 2011 took into account the Portuguese inflation rate in that time interval. The main findings of the study show that the natural regeneration of the residential housing stock contributes to the reduction of the expected seismic economic losses in Portugal, at an average rate of 14 % per 10 years, and to the reduction of the expected annualized human losses to almost one half after 10 years. The results support the conclusion that the natural regeneration of the residential housing stock contributed to the mitigation of the seismic risk in mainland Portugal, in the 10 year period under analysis, even though there was an increase of the building exposure in the region.

120 Years of U.S. Residential Housing Stock and Floor Space.

Residential buildings are a key driver of energy consumption and also impact transportation and land-use. Energy consumption in the residential sector accounts for one-fifth of total U.S. energy consumption and energy-related CO2 emissions, with floor space a major driver of building energy demands. In this work a consistent, vintage-disaggregated, annual long-term series of U.S. housing stock and residential floor space for 1891–2010 is presented. An attempt was made to minimize the effects of the incompleteness and inconsistencies present in the national housing survey data. Over the 1891–2010 period, floor space increased almost tenfold, from approximately 24,700 to 235,150 million square feet, corresponding to a doubling of floor space per capita from approximately 400 to 800 square feet. While population increased five times over the period, a 50% decrease in household size contributed towards a tenfold increase in the number of housing units and floor space, while average floor space per unit remains surprisingly constant, as a result of housing retirement dynamics. In the last 30 years, however, these trends appear to be changing, as household size shows signs of leveling off, or even increasing again, while average floor space per unit has been increasing. GDP and total floor space show a remarkably constant growth trend over the period and total residential sector primary energy consumption and floor space show a similar growth trend over the last 60 years, decoupling only within the last decade.