Neighborhood Renovation for Reaching EU Targets with Smart Analysis on the Way to 2030 and 2035 Ebru Alakavuk, Duygu Cinar Umdu, Aleyna Koyuncu, Nilay Derya Baro Buildings, 2026 Neighborhood-scale decarbonization is essential to achieving urban climate neutrality, yet existing methods often rely on complex, technology-intensive models that are difficult to implement in aging urban areas. This study introduces a simplified smart analysis method and decision-support framework to facilitate net-zero energy and emissions transitions at the neighborhood level through impactful, low-disruption interventions. Applied to a mixed-use neighborhood in Izmir, Türkiye, part of the European Union Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, the methodology evaluates four intervention strategies: rooftop Photovoltaic systems, air-source heat pumps, solar-powered LED street lighting, and repurposing idle public spaces. The analysis quantifies energy demand, CO2 emissions, and economic performance based on standardized data and incremental renovation scenarios. Results show that a gradual renovation approach, with a 10% annual replacement rate for heating systems, full rooftop Photovoltaic deployment, and street lighting retrofitting, can achieve a net-zero energy balance in 6–7 years. Redirecting fossil fuel and electricity subsidies to support renewable technologies makes these interventions economically viable within the same period. This framework demonstrates that neighborhood-scale climate neutrality can be attained without extensive structural changes, providing a replicable tool for cities with similar conditions aiming to meet European Union climate targets.
Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing approach for building decarbonization by design choices: A case study Emin Selahattin Umdu, Nurdan Yildirim, Poyraz Güzel, Ebru Alakavuk, Duygu Cinar Umdu Energy Storage, 2024 Decarbonizing the urban environment has two significant challenges: Increasing electricity demand due to the electrification of space heating and increased renewables share in the electricity supply. The European Commission defines a new grid support mechanism for peak‐shaving products in renewed Electricity Market Design. This aims to enable a new market tool to stabilize electric supply and demand. This study examines a grid‐integrated thermal storage device's technical feasibility and economic performance to meet net zero building (nZEB) definitions. Alternative scenarios considering current national nZEB targets, present energy market options, and regulations are compared using the life cycle cost and the global warming potentials over the building lifetime. The results show that better building performance is possible even with a low investment increase of 6.7% compared to minimum building standards based on regulations. This enables older building cases to perform similarly with new building targets for Turkish National nZEB. Building electrification using heat pumps and thermal storage systems gives similar economic performances in the long term when a dynamic electricity tariff is available. Adapting the life cycle approach to decision‐making in construction contracts can lead to a 50% decrease in building emissions while staying within the same construction budget.
Residents' awareness and knowledge of sustainable smart cities Ebru Alakavuk, Duygu Cinar Umdu, Aleyna Koyuncu, Nilay Derya Baro E3s Web of Conferences, 2023 Sustainable and smart city studies are issues that local governments, business circles, and the academic community often deal with regarding city and neighborhood developments. Various grant calls and research studies on the subject are frequently made, and its importance in the professional field is increasing. However, in these studies, where the society stands is often questioned. In addition, consumers and users are critical to realizing a sustainable and energy-efficient world. These users and consumers can be defined as an urban society in cities. Awareness, knowledge, and participation of city residents about sustainable and smart cities will play a significant role in the city’s journey to be sustainable and smart. In other words, increasing society’s awareness of sustainability will change attitudes and habits and make the city’s structure more sustainable and smarter. In this study, A 28-question survey was conducted with 518 participants on the society’s perspective and knowledge of sustainable smart urban areas. It was found that the participants had general knowledge and awareness of sustainability. However, they had partial and little knowledge about sustainable urban development and smart city practices, and only 15.31% of the participants knew all the terms such as sustainable environment, sustainable society, and smart life related to these concepts. While some of the results are compatible with each other, many of them are contradictory. Different studies can be done based on these contradictions.
Urban Open Therapy Gardens in EU Cities Mission: Izmir Union Park Proposal Ebru Alakavuk, Duygu Cinar Umdu Sustainability Switzerland, 2023 One of the biggest problems of societies living in modern world cities is the stress brought by a fast lifestyle. Stress affects individuals psychologically, physically, and socially. With the increase in the factors that cause stress, the need for places that individuals can use as therapy areas has also increased. Especially in this period when the 2030 100 EU (European Union) Cities Mission is determined, it is very important to design urban green spaces where the environmental and social criteria of sustainability are met, as places where society can breathe and where the society gets away from stress. In this study, based on the experiential quality criteria in outdoor therapy gardens, and the results of the evaluations made by experts and users, suggestions are made to improve the conditions of Birlik Park, located in the Gaziemir district of Izmir, one of the cities selected for the 100 EU Cities Mission, and to use it as an open space therapy garden.
Earthquake Safety Analysis of an Existing Public Building Hande ODAMAN KAYA, Ebru ALAKAVUK Turk Deprem Arastirma Dergisi, 2022 Depremin can kayıplarına neden olmadığı, binaların neden olduğu gerçeğiyle binalarda deprem güvenliğinin önemi daha net anlaşılabilir. Bu çalışmada İzmir İl’inde bulunan Ege Gümrük İl Müdürlüğü Binası için yapılan deprem güvenliği incelemesi ele alınmıştır. Yapılan performans analiziyle binanın ‘göçme’ durumunda çıkması üzerine mevcut bina için geliştirilen güçlendirme önerisi ve binanın yıkılıp yerine yeni bina yapılma olasılıkları irdelenmiştir. Her iki durum için uygulama maliyeti hesaplanmıştır; Ege Gümrük Binasının güçlendirme maliyeti yeniden yapım maliyetinin %60'ı kadardır. Sonuçta binayı korumaya veya yıkıp yeniden inşa etmeye karar vermek için veri oluşturulmuştur.
BREEAM Communities: Criteria Aim, Status, Strengths and Weaknesses Duygu Cinar Umdu, Ebru Alakavuk, Aleyna Koyuncu Proceedings 2021 International Conference on Digital Age and Technological Advances for Sustainable Development Icdata 2021, 2021 The point where Sustainable Development and Smart Growth understandings meet with standardization and technology has enabled eco-labels, assessment models and guidelines to emerge and become a trend. With Agenda 21, this trend has been well adopted and eco-labels, assessment models and certifications have begun to be created for many disciplines. The concept of sustainable neighbourhood, strengthened by the development of the Eco-Urbanism concept, constitutes an important basis for sustainable urban design and the Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) concept is nourished from this basis. BREEAM stands out as the first example developed when it comes to sustainability models of architecture and urban design. This study is a review on the criteria and indicators, purpose, status of the BREEAM Communities Model developed for smart and sustainable urban design, which is a rising value, and the scoring system was examined through BREEAM data and literature. In addition, the differences, and similarities between 5 different Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessments which are LEED ND, CASBEE UD, Citylab, and BEAM Plus Neighboorhood by 4 organizations from 70 members of the World Green Building Council, including BRE, which constitutes the BREEAM system, were investigated. As a result of all these studies, the strengths, and weaknesses of BREEAM Communities were determined.
EXAMINING THE DAYLIGHTING PERFORMANCE OF OFFICE BUILDINGS ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE RECTORATE BUILDING IN IZMIR Ecenur Kızılorenli, Ebru Alakavuk Light and Engineering, 2021 The efficient use of energy resources has affected all areas of life, as well as architecture. There are many ways to increase energy efficiency in buildings. Supporting the efficient use of daylight in the design process, reducing the energy to be used for artificial illumination and reducing heating costs are among the applications that support energy efficiency. The issue of supporting daylighting by reducing artificial illumination draws attention, especially in office buildings, due to the high number of hours used during the day. Insufficient light and lack of visual comfort in offices used during the day increase the consumption of electrical energy. Within the scope of this study, a parametric study was conducted to optimize the daylighting performance of an office building. For this purpose, rectorate building of a university, which is used as an office building, was selected for the case study, and the daylight condition of this building was examined. For increasing the daylighting performance of the building some revisions were proposed. Results of this research are discussed with visuals and simulation values.
Facade optimization for an education building using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms Arda Agirbas, Ebru Alakavuk Light and Engineering, 2020 Architectural design of a facade, both at the aesthetic point of view and from the point of view of internal daylighting performance of the building, can be considered as a complex task. In this study, we implement a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to formally exploration the process of reconstruction of the education building’s facade. The purpose of this research is to create a facade configuration by considering the size and location of elements and their materials when creating a suitable internal daylight distribution. The total construction cost of the building’s exterior and the daylight performance of the building’s interior are considered as objectives. The problem formulation includes two conflicting objectives, which are to increase daylighting aspect on each floor and reduce the total construction cost of the facade. To detect the approximation of Pareto fronts, including non-dominated solutions, we used a fast and elitist multi-objective genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). Computational and architectural results show that NSGA-II is efficient enough to demonstrate eligible facade design alternatives.
Understanding of smart cities, digital cities and intelligent cities: Similarities and differences D. Çinar Umdu, E. Alakavuk International Archives of the Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS Archives, 2020 The modern world is fast in many ways and a place where technological innovations can be adapted immediately. This speed and technological progress can be seen as a kind of development. It has positive as well as negative aspects. Economic and social problems, population growth, consumption of resources, high energy use, environmental pollution and climate change are negative phenomena brought by the modern world. Cities can also be seen as units that work on different strategies and models due to fast living, environmental, social and economic problems. Especially developing urban technology, the increase in the population rate in the cities and environmental problems have led to the development and discussion of many terms and concepts in the architecture and design literature in the urbanization process. The word and concept accumulation they possess is too much to ignore. The concepts of smart city, digital city and intelligent city are the concepts put forward to solve the problems caused by the urban developing world. These three concepts are based on the use of urban technology and they are either confused with each other or their boundaries are not determined too much. In this study, while determining the boundaries of these concepts, which have a lot in common with each other, similarities and differences between the concepts were revealed and suggestions were made regarding the definitions of the concepts.
The evaluation of an office building according to leed certificate lighting criteria Idil Bakir Kucukkaya, Ebru Alakavuk Light and Engineering, 2019 The progress in industrial and technological areas, which started with the Industrial Revolution, has deteriorated the ecological balance and depleted the natural resources. Sustainability, which initially seemed as a solution within this concept, became an important part of Interior Architecture as in disciplines related to design. The lighting systems of the offices that are the secondary living areas should be evaluated in terms of sustainability as well. In this paper, the energy savings and loss of the artificial office lighting systems has been calculated according to the ASHRAE/IES standard 90.1Ц20078?1 which are included in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certificateТs lighting criteria [1]. The wattage of the artificial lighting systems has been calculated while the systems were in use. The results of these measurements have been compared with lighting wattage and thus the lighting energy savings and loss have been configured. The office has been comparatively analyzed according to LEED criteria.
Damlatas cave, Alanya Ebru Alakavuk, Zeynep Yağmuroğlu Natural Heritage from East to West Case Studies from 6 Eu Countries, 2010
