Project description
Repurposing construction materials towards a circular industry
The construction sector faces significant challenges in ensuring its processes are both effective for the industry and sustainable for the environment. Increased construction and demolition waste is an ongoing concern, and new methods are required to deal with this issue. The EU-funded Reincarnate project is working on a platform that will provide information on the life cycle and reuse potential of materials as well as methods to predict and extend product lifetime. The project will employ advanced methodologies such as digital twin representation, AI and robotic automation to develop and demonstrate 10 innovations based on the platform data. The aim is to validate and promote the reusability of materials and products in the construction sector, thus encouraging circularity and sustainability.
Objective
Reincarnate aims at enabling the European construction industry to significantly reduce construction and demolition waste (CDW) by providing a circular potential assessment information model platform (CP-IM) and a set of innovations to make use of the CP-IM. The CP-IM will provide a digital representation of building materials and products with life-cycle information and prediction methods for tracing and predicting the lifetime of a products / material. The CP-IM will also allow for assessing the potential for lifetime extension and reuse and possibilities to predict circular value flows. Based on the CP-IM REINCARNATE will develop and demonstrate ten innovations that use CP-IM data, ranging from innovations for building inspection, to solutions for planning construction and dismantling, to automatically identifying and sorting CDW, to decision support tools for architects and real estate managers. The innovations will draw upon emerging digital technologies, such as digital twin representation, artificial intelligence, and robotic automation. REINCARNATE will also develop detailed social science insights about the social adoption behavior existing in the wider construction industry that will allow for understanding how a wide realization within the industry can be established that building products and materials can be reincarnated and re-used in high product quality. All innovations will be demonstrated on five selected demonstrators. Business process guidelines, an online learning platform with training materials and proposals for standards will be developed to additional foster widespread dissemination and exploitation of the REINCARNATE results. The REINCARNATE consortium combines 16 partners from different EU member countries and Hong Kong with strong expertise in digital twins, lifecycle prediction, material assessment, social sciences, construction management, architecture, and real estate management.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
10623 Berlin
Germany