Monitoring Committee of the UPC-JG Chair, december 2024

Semi-annual meeting of the UPC-JG Chair monitoring committee.

On December 11th, we held the semi-annual meeting of our UPC-JG chair for sustainability in buildings, with the attendance of all its members: Eva Cuerva (professor at ETSEIB and director of the chair), Eduard Egusquiza (professor of fluid mechanics at ETSEIB), Pere Alavedra (former rector of the International University of Catalonia), Pere Esquerra (former director of JG), Maria Salamero (president of the Association of Industrial Engineers of Catalonia), Albert Artús, technical director of JG, and  our president Juan Gallostra.

We reviewed the current activities of the chair and possible future projects:

  • The study on logistics warehouses is entering its final stage. Once the digital model of a warehouse has been developed and the model calibrated by placing real sensors to compare the in-situ measurements with what the model predicts, we can now test different environmental improvement strategies to see which one is the most effective: variation of the thermal insulation of walls and roof, variation of the percentage of skylight surface to be placed on the roof, variation of the natural ventilation of the warehouse through infiltrations. This study is being carried out in collaboration with Montepino Logística.
  • We are starting the CFD modeling study of air diffusion and decontamination of critical rooms in laboratories. Here, we also aim to establish and calibrate a digital twin of different rooms in a laboratory to verify which air distribution and space decontamination systems are most effective. We intend to establish a collaboration agreement with the Spanish National Research Council and manufacturers such as Trox or Steris.
  • Once Gil Vinyeta’s doctoral thesis (rated as excellent cum laude) has been completed and presented, we are studying how to disseminate it by turning the thesis into a more divulgative book.

 

In the final debate, the members of the monitoring committee suggested material circularity and applied artificial intelligence as possible future study topics for the chair.