CLICKdesign delivering fingertip knowledge to enable service life performance specification of wood

PROJECT CODE: CLICKdesign is supported under the umbrella of ERA-NET Cofund ForestValue by the Republic of Slovenia Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. ForestValue has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N° 773324
PROJECT TITLE: CLICKdesign delivering fingertip knowledge to enable service life performance specification of wood
PROJECT LEADER: BRE (UK) / Jakub Sandak, PhD (for InnoRenew CoE)
PERIOD: 01.03.2019 – 31.05.2022
BUDGET: 1,355,726.00 EUR (210,000.00 EUR for InnoRenew CoE)
FINANCING: European Union – ForestValue Research Programme and the Republic of Slovenia Ministry of Education, Science and Sport
PARTNERS: BRE (UK), University of Goettingen (Germany); Lund University (Sweden); VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (Finland); InnoRenew CoE (Slovenia); Institute Technological FCBA (France); Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research NIBIO (Norway); Research Institute for the Biology of Insect (IRBI) (France); FPInnovations (Canada); and the company Hygiène Office (France)

CLICKdesign will develop a performance based specification protocol to enable provision of a software tool for architects and specifiers to embed service life performance specification for wood. The expected major breakthrough of CLICKdesign is the development of a performance based specification protocol for wood in construction and enables provision of a software tool for service life performance specification for planners and architects. This major innovation will expand the reach of wood products to new users beyond the small proportion of specifiers who are xylophiles and ‘wood aware’, increasing market confidence with users for wood as a reliable product and expand possibility for new product innovations. This supports the forest sector’s vision to triple market share for wood products and services in construction by 2030. The CLICKdesign tool will facilitate reaching this goal by combining an easy-to-use tool with pedagogic background information.

InnoRenew CoE project activities

Our main activities are to define a numerical quantifier of the aesthetical state of wooden elements exposed to weathering, to design a procedure for determination of aesthetical limit states for the customer tolerance to material deterioration, to implement whether dose-response modelling approach for simulation of the wooden elements appearance changes along service life, to develop an optimization tool for scheduling of cleaning/maintenance/replacement, and to integrate simulation of building aesthetical changes with visualization software.

“The research leading to these results has received funding from the ForestValue Research Programme which is a transnational research, development and innovation programme jointly funded by national funding organisations within the framework of the ERA-NET Cofund ‘ForestValue – Innovating forest-based bioeconomy.”