Aikaterina Karanafti

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki | AUTH · Division of Structural Engineering (D.S.E.)

The transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) stands as a pivotal strategy in reshaping our prevailing consumption patterns towards more sustainable resource management. Within this context, the European Union places a strong emphasis on elevating recycling and renovation rates while reducing dependence on primary resources, with a particular focu...

The construction industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by digitalization and an unwavering commitment to implementing circular economy (CE) principles and sustainability into its core practices. Emerging digital technologies (DTs), such as Material Passports (MPs), Building Information Modelling (BIM) Artificial Intelligence (A...

One of the major motivations behind the effort for the transition from linear models to circular ones in the building sector is related to the need for the minimization of resources depletion. Water holds a prominent position among those resources. The building sector is responsible for appreciable water consumption and, hence, represents an import...

Humanity in our days is fighting with climate change effects and the depletion of natural resources. In this direction, the adoption of sustainable and circular practices is considered vital and in most cases is prescribed by regulations. The construction sector is responsible for massive amounts of energy consumed during the extraction of raw mate...

Towards the achievement of zero-emission buildings, conventional envelope solutions have started to become outdated. The concept of Dynamic thermal insulation is an innovative approach, still under development, that attracts a continuously and fast growing scientific and research interest, mainly due to its perfect alignment with the targets of a z...

The construction sector is responsible for a large part of CO 2 emissions, consumption of resources and generation of waste globally. Although the importance of construction and demolition waste management in a circular and sustainable way has been acknowledged on an academic and policy level, there are still steps needed to be taken both in terms...

Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) effective management is of vital importance, especially regarding the climate-neutral economy target set for 2050. The common practice of landfilling them during the past decades and ignoring the environmental impacts is now obsolete, with countries around the world adopting national regulations for their pro...

Towards the achievement of nZEB and the enormous effort for mitigating climate change effects, new sustainable construction strategies are continuously introduced and adopted in the building sector. Thermal insulation is considered a fundamental strategy before moving to more complex ones. Over the past 50 years, thermal insulation is mainly concei...

Regarding the constantly increasing cooling demands in the building sector due to climate change effects, strategies for reducing the cooling demands are vital. Among the major strategies is thermal insulation, however, overheating phenomenon during the summer months is a frequent problem in over-insulated buildings. In this study, a typical dwelli...

The energy consumption mitigation of the building sector, one of the most energy-consuming, is a major target of the European policy. Recent studies indicate that increased thermal protection may burden the energy performance of a building in warm and hot regions by increasing the overheating risk during the warm season. In this study, a building i...

Improving the energy efficiency of residential buildings is of outmost importance for reducing their environmental footprint. Recent studies demonstrate that a highly insulated building envelope may burden the building’s performance during the cooling period, especially in regions with hot summers. In this study, the energy performance of a residen...