sbe16

17-18 November; the Sydney SBE16 conference

This event took place during 17-18 November in the Australian National Maritime Museum, an original and successful venue. This was a fairly large conference, with over 140 peer-reviewed papers and 200+ delegates. As with most conferences, there was a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, in this case a mix of 3 and 4 parallel sessions.

The principal organizers were Prof. Deo Prasad (Chair), Dr. Lan Ding and A/Prof. Francesco Fiorito. The event benefitted from financial support by Urban Growth NSW, a government urban development organization and from other support by the CRC organization and UNSW. It was also perhaps not unhelpful for the success of the event that one of its supporters was Professor Lucy Turnbull, wife of the Prime Minister.

Plenary speakers included Prof. Helen Lochhead, Dean of the UNSW faculty of Built Environment, who gave a very informative and useful presentation on the reconstruction efforts launched in New York after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Prof. Deo Prasad gave a speech on lowering the carbon footprint of buildings and cities, Nils Larsson presented an overview of the activities and plans of the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GABC) and Man Kit Leung from HKGBC provided an overview of the WSBE17 global conference to be held in Hong Kong in June 2017.

Professor Mat Santamouris of UNSW, who has a staggeringly impressive resumé, outlined the problems of increasing demand for space cooling in many countries. The plenary presentations were concluded by Prof. Peter Newton speaking on low-carbon transitions and Prof. Dennis Else on carbon value engineering.

Presentations of refereed papers in the parallel sessions took place successfully under conditions of limited time allocations and some technical difficulties.

Nils L.

SBE16 Torino declared a success

The SBE16 Torino conference took place during the period February 17-19, as part of the international SBE series of events. The Torino conference was the second in a series of 20 events taking place this year, and can be declared to be very successful in all respects.

Although the theme (Towards post--carbon cities) was fairly specialized, about 140 delegates attended the 1 1/2 day event. The topic is consistent with the increased recent interest by researchers and EU funding programs in urban issues, especially at the small urban scale, with some extending to regional or territorial scale.

Malta SBE16 conference

Researchers and professionals are invited to submit abstracts until the 31st July 2015 to present theirr work at the SBE16 Conference in Malta. Visit www.sbe16malta.org for further information. The event forms part of the 2016 International Sustainable Built Environment Conference Series convened under the auspices of the four international organizations: iiSBE, CIB, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC.

SBE16_Malta will be the first international conference addressing a Sustainable Built Environment in the Mediterranean Region.

SBE16 Torino, Towards Post-Carbon Cities

The SBE16 conference that will take place in Torino during 18-19 February 2016, is focused on a shift towards post-carbon cities.
This event, sponsored by the City of Torino, CESBA, and the FASUDIR project, and organized by iiSBE Italia and DIST - Politecnico di Torino, has a number of interesting features. As with other SBE16 events, the series sponsors are CIB, iiSBE, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC.

One of these is free admission to all sessions for students, including PhDs, free public admission to the opening plenary, and a low 200 Euro standard delegate fee. Another unusual aspect is that authors will present drafts of their papers at the conference, and a subsequent discussion period with the audience will lead to a revised paper that will be due one month after the conference.

Update for Dublin SBE16 on Sustainable Fire Engineering

This conference will deal with subjects that are not usually part of a sustainable building agenda, and will deal with effective fire safety in sustainable buildings. The event will be held during 6-8 April 2016 and abstracts are due before 25 September 2015. For information about the conference and on submitting abstracts, go to:

http://sustainable-firengineering.ie/

Zurich SBE16 extends abstracts deadline

The deadline for the abstract submission for the SBE16 Zurich conference has been extended until the 1st of August 2015. The conference takes place from 15-17 June 2016 at the ETH Zurich and focus on system thinking in the built environment. Workshops will be conducted before the conference (on the 13th and 14th). If you want to propose one, the deadline for application is the 15th of November 2015.

An update on the SBE16/17 conference series

It is about time to provide an update on the status of the SBE conference series. As most readers of this website are aware, the series is managed by CIB, iiSBE, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC and operates on a three-year cycle. This year has a focus on planning, while next year will feature at least 19 and probably 20 national events, to be climaxed in 2017 by the World SBE conference in Hong Kong. The attached file provides a current overview of the situation.

Call for expressions of interest for SBE 16 events

As part of the on-going SBE Conference series, CIB, iiSBE, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC, invite non-binding Expression of Interest (EOI) for the holding of national or regional conferences on sustainable built environment to be held in 2016. We welcome expressions of interest that include support from major professional or research-oriented organizations in the country or region.