Conserving the Past for the Future: supporting sustainable rehabilitation of Existing/Historic Buildings

联合国教科文组织《文化促进可持续城市发展全球报告》强调，在北美，城市可持续发展对话本身往往优先考虑新建建筑，而不是旧的遗产建筑。尽管老城区具有固有的复原力，但人们却未能认识到它们的价值。历史建筑一直被专业人士批评为能源效率低下或结构不健全，这些假设往往未经证实。 为了简单说明加拿大现有/遗产地的规模，向加拿大财政部秘书处查询“1676 年至 1968 年间建造的联邦政府所有建筑”，结果显示超过 17,000 处房产。这些财产可能需要接受联邦遗产建筑审查办公室 (FHBRO) 的审查和指定（目前已指定 3,000 多个地点）以及联邦遗产建筑强制要求的修复方法。此外，根据加拿大自然资源部的数据，大约有 5,460,000 套住宅的历史超过 1977 年。当前的研究计划重点是为现有建筑开发数字工作流程，特别是为可持续发展方面的开创性政策做出贡献的遗产地。这将通过以下方式实现：(1) 准备一份报告，评估处理定性和定量方法的最新水平，以了解现有和遗产地的能源和结构性能； (2) 使用选定的试点案例研究开发一些数字工作流程来记录、分析和可视化； (3) 制定数字工作流程指南和协议，以增进对现有建筑和遗产地的了解。此外，数字保存平台（dataverse）的使用将用于确保收集和处理的数据的寿命，以便其他研究人员将来可以使用它。该项目将为研究生和本科生提供多学科研究培训的绝佳机会，使他们能够很好地掌握土木和环境工程、数字媒体和人机交互领域的知识。

The UNESCO Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Urban Development, emphasizes that in North America, the urban sustainability dialogue itself has tended to prioritize new construction rather than older heritage buildings. There has been a failure to recognize the values of older urban areas, despite their inherent resilience. Historic buildings have been criticized by professionals as being energy-inef?cient or structurally unsound, assumptions which are often uncorroborated. To provide a simple illustration of the magnitude of existing/heritage places in Canada, a query on the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat about "federally owned buildings constructed between 1676 and 1968" yields over 17,000 properties. These properties are potentially subject to Federal Heritage Buildings Review Of?ce (FHBRO) review and designation (with over 3,000 places currently designated) and the required rehabilitation approach mandated for Federal Heritage Buildings. Furthermore, according to Natural Resources Canada, about 5,460,000 dwellings are older than 1977. The current research program focuses on developing digital work?ows for existing buildings, in particular for heritage places that can contribute to ground-breaking policies in sustainability. This will be accomplished by: (1) preparing a report evaluating the state-of-the-art in dealing with qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding the energy and structural performance of existing and heritage places; (2) developing a number of digital work?ows to record, analyse and visualize using selected pilot case studies; and (3) producing guidelines and protocols for digital work?ows to improve the understanding of existing buildings and heritage places. Furthermore, the use of a digital preservation platform (dataverse) will be used to ensure the longevity of the data collected, and processed, so other researchers in the future can use that. The program will provide an excellent opportunity for multidisciplinary research training for graduate and undergraduate students that will become well accounted with the areas of civil and environmental engineering, digital media, and human-computer interactions.