Conference: Construction and Built Environment - Future Horizons

Start/Stop Date:
17–19 Jun 2014
Organiser:
European Construction Technology Platform, jointly with ENCORD (European Network of Construction Companies for Research and Development) and ENBRI (European Network of Building Research Institutes), and with the support of ECCREDI (European Council for C
Venue:
Square - Brussels Meeting Centre, Glass Entrance rue Mont des Arts B-1000 Brussels
Focus Areas:
Building performance, role of the built environment
Type of Event:
Conference

This event co-locates with Building Test Expo 2014. ECTP Conference delegates and Expo Exhibitors will thus benefit from exclusive networking opportunities.

Scope

The hard built environment is mainly constituted by buildings, infrastructures and cultural landscapes. It can be considered as a set of natural, physical, economic, human, social and cultural capitals. The hard built environment is also a place of tightly interconnected private and public infrastructure. Its composition and dynamic is very complex, since it offers and is associated to a lot of various services which support our day-to-day life. So its interconnection with the "soft" built infrastructure (institutions, rules, governance, knowledge values…) and with the community is very important.

This concept is called to take more and more importance in the near future for a lot of reasons. First of all, the built environment is our major living environment; this is the place (homes, offices, transport infrastructures, cultural places, etc.) where we spent more than 80% of our time. The quality of the built environment therefore directly impacts the quality of our life. But the built environment also serves a lot of industries and services. It impacts therefore the performance of many sectors. Last but not least, paramount challenges such as energy, climate change, efficiency and more generally sustainability prove to become of utmost importance for the built environment and very often need to be tackled within an integrated approach.

The objective of this conference, which will celebrate the 10th anniversary of ECTP and the 25th anniversaries of both ENCORD and ENBRI, will be to identify the main challenges and to shape the future horizons of the built environment in the coming 25 years. How to develop and implement innovation in the built environment to reinforce its level of performance and to boost its global mission, while keeping its traditional and cultural feature? How to increase its positive impacts on life quality, economy growth and job creation, while keeping a sustainable attitude? How to develop cooperation between the construction sector, which is the main actor of the creation and maintenance of the built environment, and all other stakeholders (from industry or society) to follow a coherent, integrated and effective roadmap?

The Conference will allow getting high level visions from experts on the various facets. It will merge conceptual discussions with more technical debates. It will assess the role of the built environment and the construction sector in the current Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, as well as in the more long term horizons of several EU policies. It will also allow stakeholders from industry, research and society to meet, to exchange ideas and to get prepared to current opportunities offered by Horizon 2020.

More information about the conference