Barriers and challenges to smart buildings' concepts and technologies in Brazilian social housing projects

Abstract

Smart building research is commonly explored in commercial buildings and less studied in the context of social housing. In this context, this article aims to diagnose the main barriers to the adoption of smart buildings' concepts and technologies in social housing projects in Brazil. The 'Expert Interviews' method was used with seven Brazilian experts in the fields of smart buildings and social housing, based on the assumption that experts have special knowledge, which are related to a special field. The main barriers categories identified in this study can be summarised in: 1) economic; 2) policy; 3) social; 4) technical. Based on these results, the study aims to contribute with possible solutions and guidelines to overcome such barriers, and discusses propositions that can be improved into hypothesis for later empirical testing.

Appraising the nexus between influencers and sustainability‐oriented innovation adoption in affordable housing projects

“…Further analysis of the data verified that the passive methods remained the most used sustainable method by designers because of low cost, high familiarity of designers with these methods and good amount of policy and incentives that encouraging use of these methods. The findings corroborated the observation in previous studies on the effect of high cost and lack of technical guidelines and standards on low adoption of new methods such as life‐cycle carbon footprint assessment, renewable energy and lean design in affordable housing project (Junior et al, 2017).…”