Cities are becoming increasingly urbanised, with more than 60% of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2030. Unsustainable growth to cope with this increase is one of the challenges that the 2030 Agenda aims to address.  The 2030 Agenda is a joint action plan that addresses 17 key goals (Sustainable Development Goals) and 169 targets related to the transformation to a more sustainable, prosperous and equitable world.

Among the above-mentioned goals is SDG 11 Sustainable cities and communities.

Cities and metropolitan areas account for 70% of global carbon emissions and more than 60% of resource use. Rapid expansion is resulting in poorer infrastructure, growing slums and inadequate services. The priority for action is to reduce the negative environmental impact of cities and improve waste management, both from everyday life and from construction projects.

PLURAL is a European project that aims to reduce energy consumption and emissions in buildings through an integrated solution called Plug-and-Use (PnU) kits.  The key to achieving its objectives is to understand how to select and integrate various renewable energy technologies, incorporate them into prefabricated façade components and optimise their performance for different building types, climates and socio-economic conditions.

PLURAL has 4 pillars:

At present, just after the first year of the project, the preliminary solutions of the three pilot locations have been defined and two visits have been made to Kassava (Czech Republic) and Terrassa (Catalonia), where a first look at the buildings has been made and used to define elements and optimize critical points among all the project partners. Also, the Greek partners visited and evaluated the building near the town hall of Voula, Athens.

ITeC is now in charge of leading the following tasks; the creation of BIM components and the database, carried out by our team of BIM experts and the certification strategies and requirements, guided by the product quality department.

On the other hand, ITeC is the leader of WP8 Market and Business Oriented Explotation where it leads at the same time the following tasks:

• Environmental, cost and social impact assessment of PnU kits, guided by the sustainable construction department.
• Standardization, certification and support activities in the revision of the LCA standard, guided by both the product quality department and the sustainable construction department.
• In addition to being in charge of leading the task of piloting the methodology and planning of deep update, guided by the construction process management department.

On October 18 and 19, a two-day session was held where the completed tasks were evaluated and future tasks until March 2022 were presented with a discussion of critical points. Three workshops were also held; on the one hand, the first Exploitation Workshop, aimed at discussing the exploitation of the project, on the other hand, the Demonstration Site Workshop, aimed at learning about the risks and challenges of the demonstration sites and finally the MODEST Decision Support Tool, aimed at learning about the intended scope of the tool, target groups, structure and functionality.

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