“Design and prototyping of a low-embodied carbon structure using biochar-based composites” studies bio-based composites in construction through biochar: a solid byproduct of thermo-chemically converted biomass. Bio-based composites are typically low in strength. As a corrective, the study will investigate a method to develop structural strength through intelligent planning, execution, and material characterization. This proposes an alternative to conventional design and construction methods that develop strength through bulk, brute force, and high embodied energy feedstocks like cement.

Inner-city organizations in Winnipeg have long called for transformation of the policies and practices that created injustice for inner-city residents. This year’s State of the Inner City report uses precedent studies to identify funding models that foreground community leadership, and knowledge translation and community development events to celebrate the people and community organizations of the inner city.

Currently, the building sector accounds of 36% of end-use energy consumption in Ontario. With the rise of appeal towards green energy, the government has focused greatly on developing sustainability policies. Additionally, Ontario has seen a rise in the equity-seeking communities’ population over the last few decades. Aknowlegding the success of sustainability policies is greatly depends in the participation of the entire population leads to the question of inclusivity of inclusive population.

This research project will address the challenges in developing, implementing, and using digital twins for regulatory agencies. The work is divided into two streams. The first investigates the technical challenges that regulatory agencies face in creating of digital twins, including reviewing the development approval processes, encoding codes, bylaws, and other regulations, developing a BIM standard for regulatory compliance; and integrating BIM and GIS. The second stream identifies the economic, environmental, and social challenges that can be addressed by using digital twins.

The proposed project tries to leverage the increased access to smart IoT devices in residential homes. Data acquired from these devices hide insights on home use patterns, and if understood have the potential to reduce energy, water and other resource usage in homes and improve the overall quality of life (better thermal and visual comfort) across different seasons for occupants. A framework for adaption of everyday homes into smart entities is to be developed with proof-of-concept algorithms and visualization platforms to test how these solutions can aid residential cost savings.

Combining design and digital workflows, pre-fabrication, and automated assembly provides a rare opportunity for the AEC industry to unite three critical construction items that have traditionally been at odds with one another: Time, Cost and Quality.

In response to the current housing crisis, we are studying the effectiveness of tiny homes as a solution to transitional housing for housing insecure persons in the Region of Waterloo. We have completed an earlier phase of this research which produced a Tiny House prototype and propose to continue this research through the following two streams: A. Developing governance, financing and procurement strategies for a tiny home community in Cambridge through consultation with local partners. B.

Digital Workflows for Adaptive Reuse of Historic Houses in Ottawa’s downtown (Canada) will explore newapplications of emerging digital technologies for the rehabilitation of our built heritage, especially in producingrecords relevant for the understanding of the historic fabric of residential buildings in Ottawa. Good decision inheritage conservation relay on accurate and precise information about the building’s fabric and structure.

The aim of the proposed project is to analyze and develop a conceptual design of a greenhouse that’ll be able to repurpose the waste heat expelled from Growcer’s container farms. As there is a lot of research on related topics such as hydroponic container farming and greenhouse farming, there is still a lack of research conducted on merging the two systems into one.

This project will study different residential building retrofit strategies commonly used in Ontario in terms of their environmental performance. In particular, it will try to understand the embodied and operation carbon emissions associated with those strategies. The aim of this project is to understand the effect of using different material and systems in retrofit projects. This understanding is important in order to complement governmental and private efforts in reducing the environmental impacts of buildings.