Holistic approach for energy and seismic upgrading of buildings

Last March, all e-SAFE partners met for the sixth transnational project meeting in the Sports School’s facilities of Timisoara (Romania) where one of the two virtual pilots of the project is taking place.

The project e -SAFE (Energy and Seismic AFfordable rEnovation solutions) aims to contribute to the holistic renovation of the EU building stock by developing an innovative, market-ready system combining energy saving, decarbonization, seismic resistance, time and cost reduction, minimal disturbance, and a co-design protocol. The project includes the demonstration of the e-SAFE system in one real and two virtual pilot buildings. The real pilot is a public housing building in the city of Catania (Sicily) and the two virtual pilots are two buildings in Romania: one school in the city of Timisoara and a public housing building in Bucharest.

Currently, the virtual pilot renovation of the school in Timisoara has been completed. For a period of three months, a representative of the consortium was in Timisoara implementing the co-design protocol. Specifically, the concept "co-design" refers to a participatory, co-creative and open design approach where building users collaborate directly throughout the design process with experts (architects, civil engineers, etc.) so that they can identify together the best solutions for the renovation of the building. In this case, the administrative staff, teachers, and students participated in the whole process and the results are depicted in the photos. They collectively created a renovation plan, prioritizing renovations over energy upgrading and structural safety, protecting the school building from potential seismic threats.

The partners of e-SAFE project had the chance to visit the pilot building during the project meeting which took place on the 29th-30th of March 2023. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the project progress, the challenges faced, and agree on the next steps in relation to the activities ahead. Deloitte as the leader of the work package on business models, financial schemes, exploitation, and technology transfer presented the work in progress in relation to “Business models and financial schemes: identification and development” and facilitated the round table discussion on the financial schemes and business models to be potentially employed for e-SAFE’s future commercialization. The purpose of the main deliverable of this work package is to describe the business models and financial schemes that will be employed to commercialise the e-SAFE solutions.

For more information you can browse the project website https://esafe-buildings.eu/en/ and stay informed about all project activities by registering at Newsletter of the project or by following the project's social media pages: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.