URMIBALI Research Project: Exploring How Digital Documentation Technologies Can Enhance Knowledge and Support the Reuse of Materials in Traditional and Historic Buildings Within an Urban Mining Approach

Meeting European carbon neutrality and energy performance targets requires large-scale rehabilitation of historic and traditional buildings, one of the construction sector’s key challenges by 2050. This will significantly increase demand for new materials and the production of waste, which already accounts for 39% of waste in Wallonia. From a circular economy and urban mining perspective, however, this waste can be viewed as a valuable resource for reuse and recovery. Despite this potential, Wallonia lacks detailed information on the material composition of its historic building stock, including material types, quantities, and reuse potential. Such knowledge is crucial for designing effective renovation strategies and promoting circular construction practices. The URMIBALI project addresses this gap by investigating traditional residential buildings built before 1919 in Liège (Belgium). Based on six case studies, the project develops two complementary research parts. The first part focuses on inventorying existing material stocks, estimating waste flows resulting from energy renovations, and evaluating the reuse potential of the main waste fractions. The second part proposes an initial digital methodology for the rapid and efficient acquisition of façade material data. The project’s novelty lies in its multi-material, bottom-up, and transdisciplinary approach, as well as in the creation of previously unavailable data on building-stock composition and the development of simple and flexible digital methods to acquire those data. These outputs improve knowledge of traditional buildings, support projections of renovation waste up to 2050, and facilitate urban-scale management of material flows, including transport, supply chains, and environmental impacts. This contribution presents the research methodology, key findings, and the transferability of the digital method to other building typologies and European contexts.