Dr Aktas from EPICentre & CEGE was awarded the Newton Fund Institutional Links Grant
2 June 2020
Dr Yasemin D Aktas has been awarded a Newton Fund Institutional Links grant for a two-year project titled “PROcesses for sustainable retrofit of Traditional dwellings in Turkey for Climate-resilience, Conservation and ComforT” (PROT3CT).
PROT3CT team includes EPICentre, Middle East Technical University (METU) (Dr Guliz Bilgin-Altinoz - Turkey lead), UK Centre for Moisture in Buildings (UKCMB), Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance (STBA), Turkish Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation, and the leading heritage NGO and conservation experts network in Turkey, KOR-DER.
The specific objectives of PROT3CT are to identify cost- effective packages of improvement options to enhance energy performance of traditional dwelling typologies in Turkey, help increase awareness of residents, custodians of heritage, policy makers and academia of climate resiliency, and provide knowledge exchange to establish sustainable impact and collaborative links. The project will bring together major stakeholders of energy efficiency and heritage conservation with a number of inter-sectoral capacity building and consultation workshops. 5 case study towns in different local climate zones in Turkey were selected for on-site monitoring, physical and resident surveys, and field testing. The data collected from these will then be used to develop rigorous building performance models to identify the energy performance baseline and the performance gap, and to develop solutions to then share and discuss with the stakeholders.
Among the key deliverables of the project are major grant proposals, production of educational material targeting various stakeholders and a methodological framework paper with costed retrofit packages. This unique collaboration will also facilitate the setup of a competitive research hub under METU Conservation of Cultural Heritage Programme to develop expertise on various aspects of climate resilience in built heritage.
PROT3CT key people:
- Yasemin D Aktas (EPICentre & UKCMB),
- Nigel Griffiths (STBA)
- Guliz Bilgin-Altinoz (METU),
- Peter Rickaby (UKCMB),
- Valentina Marincioni (UKCMB),
- Dina D’Ayala (EPICentre),
- Kai Wang (EPICentre),
- Negin Jahed (METU),
- Elif Sirt (METU),
- Ozgun Ozcakir (METU and KOR-DER),
- Sibel Yildirim-Esen (METU)