Conference Chairs

University of Stuttgart / Department Life Cycle Engineering of the Institute for Acoustics and Building Physics (IABP, Department GaBi)

In recent years, sustainability with all its aspects has evolved into the single most important and pressing aspect for our planet’s and, thus, our own future. While the overall goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5° is clear from a scientific point of view, many underlying interrelations are not visible or tangible enough to become active or even agree on a common pathway as a society. Therefore, at the Department Life Cycle Engineering of the Institute for Acoustics and Building Physics (IABP, Department GaBi) at the University of Stuttgart, we develop and deploy methods of decision support in the life cycle of innovative products and technologies.

“We conduct research for a future worth living, and our work focuses mainly on providing new methodologies to assess environmental impacts, quantifying the impacts of ground-breaking technology and developing digital services for the abovementioned objectives,” says Prof. Dr. Philip Leister, director of the institute. At IABP, for instance, we developed the LANCA® (Land Use Indicator Value Calculation in Life Cycle Assessment) method to quantify the land use impact of products (https://eplca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/uploads/QMS_H08_MonscenReff_del-land-use_FINAL.pdf) and the LCWE (Life Cycle Working Environment) method to quantify social impacts along the value chain. The largest challenges, however, are still ahead of us. In the Cluster of Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC, https://www.intcdc.uni-stuttgart.de/), we combine all our research objects. In the digital field of computational design, we are developing a prospective methodology to assess the environmental impacts as early as in the design stage, and, at the same time, are assessing the environmental impacts of all our partners’ activities: from design to production up to the end of life of tomorrow’s buildings. This serves as a blueprint project where we will fully integrate environmental impact quantification from a research and evaluation perspective.

In the High Performance Center Mass Personalization (https://www.masspersonalization.de/), IABP is developing methods and technologies to seize the sustainability opportunities that arise from the trend of a quality-oriented, individualistic society that meets advanced production technologies. “While the built environment is our home turf and itself not limited to buildings, we also consider wider societal trends in our research, such as mass personalization and its widespread implications,” Prof. Dr. Leistner explains. To keep an overview of all arising challenges, new digital solutions are required. In the High Performance Center, data science is used to identify and optimize the impacts triggered by individual decision based on personal preferences. The aim is to eventually benefit from the big advantages of mass personalization without sacrificing a sustainable future.

The list of challenges as well as of our projects (https://www.iabp.uni-stuttgart.de/gabi/forschungsthemen/projektliste/) is long, but we have to start somewhere. We are looking forward to sharing and discussing some of our findings with you at the LCM, and, eventually, to unfold their full potential together.