madaster is the digital library of materials and products.
On the madaster platform, the raw material data of a building are documented on the basis of BIM and enriched by external databases. The bundled data is reflected in a digital building resource passport in a comprehensible and differentiated way. This passport enables financial and circular valuations as well as the calculation of the embodied carbon and thus supports the management and disposal of real estate and the reuse of components and materials by establishing a material cadastre.
Cross-border/international
Netherlands
Germany
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Belgium
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Austria
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Other
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Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
Horizon2020 / Horizon Europe
This initiative has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 779024.
No
Yes
2022-01-19
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Dr. Patrick Bergmann Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Patrick Last name of representative: Bergmann Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Managing Director Madaster Germany GmbH Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Bundesallee 39/40a Town: Berlin Postal code: 10717 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 172 7695009 E-mail:patrick.bergmann@madaster.com Website:https://madaster.de/
URL:https://www.linkedin.com/company/madaster-germany/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #madaster #madastergermany #gebäuderessourcenpass #materialkataster #materialpassport #circulareconomy
madaster wants to empower humanity to stay within planetary boundaries so that everybody can live in an environment without waste. We want to adjust our economic system in which we give materials an identity, so that earth’s resources can restore, and resource scarcity be avoided. We believe in the power of data intelligence, the power of collaboration and openness to enable this transition to a more liveable future.
The madaster platform is a unique, innovative, disruptive online cloud platform providing the user a ‘one stop access point’ to leverage their property data to meet and exceed their environmental, regulatory, health and financial driven ambitions across the full lifecycle of the object. Construction object information (digital twin) containing asset-, product- and material-data can be stored, enriched, shared and managed. madaster automatically processes Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) files - Building Information Models (BIM) software - and enriches them with data from other public and non-public sources. In the case of existing buildings, the Urban Mining Screener can be used to generate an initial estimate of the materials used in the building and thus make a more well-founded statement about the CO2 savings potential.
madaster creates transparency about material assets by generating material passports of a physical object based on the registration of materials, components and products used. It generates insight in the financial valuation, embedded carbon, toxicity and reuse potential of the applied materials, components and products.
The platform provides a trusted source of data for an ecosystem that includes marketplaces (for reused products), designers, financers, valuators and regulators. The mmadaster platform helps all actors along the value chain to build more resource-efficiently and save CO2 in a very concrete way in a building.
Building Passport
Circular Economy
Embodied Carbon
Circularity Index
Financial Value of materials
We regard Earth as a closed system in which there must be no waste. Raw materials are limited editions and scarce. In order to keep materials available indefinitely, they need to be registered and documented. By giving them an identity on the madaster platform, they form a source for reuse and each (construction) object can be designed and managed as a material bank. In addition, important information on CO2 emissions (e.g. life cycle assessment), but also financial value (what is the value of materials) and information on the health impact of materials can be generated through the documentation and serve as a basis for decision-making in the evaluation and renovation of the property. The Huthmacher building in Berlin, for example, could be seen as a material database through the registration on madaster and thus 40% CO2 could be saved through the preservation of the supporting structure. In addition, recycled materials were increasingly used in the interior construction to achieve a higher circularity index.
madaster makes a decisive contribution to achieving the EU and global climate targets in the individual countries and at European level because there are no borders for material flows. Therefore, madaster supports the various initiatives to realize (inter)national guidelines and standards for materials, products and building passports or logbooks. We are active in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Belgium and Austria. Moreover, there are pilot projects in the UK, Taiwan, Canada and Australia. For example, in Germany more than 900 buildings (300 new and BIM-based buildings and 600 existing buildings) are registered on a detailed level. With madaster, we can provide insights how many materials and products are in place in the built environment and when and where they will be available for new projects. We can concentrate on short material value chains and focus on the national resources and materials due to deconstruction in our neighbourhood.
On the one hand, as a platform we focus on the connection of different systems and databases to connect people and projects. We built the basis to make a circular economy in real estate possible. The various stakeholders along the entire value chain benefit from networking with each other and together find forward-looking solutions in workshops that we organise on topics such as circularity, inventory analysis, financial residual value.
On the other hand, the madaster platform allows for great transparency of building products and materials used, as well as supporting resource-saving construction methods. The use of qualified products leads to "healthy construction" and contributes significantly to improving people's quality of life and indoor air quality.
Moving away from "take-make-waste" towards a circular economy, madaster formulates an essential approach to solving problems such as material scarcity and the use of primary raw materials, as well as a concrete solution to climate change. The reuse and recycling of materials can be seen as an opportunity for further development of products that set new impulses and have a positive influence on our living environment. Among other things, the preservation of existing buildings is protected by prioritising renovation and conversion over demolition, and the volume of waste is reduced in the long term. By bundling all documents and information on the platform, madaster promotes sustainable planning with little maintenance for the user.
Uploading a project on the madaster platform does not require any additional effort if a BIM model is available and allows for easy data exchange through IFC format or an Excel file. The design of the madaster platform is user-friendly and clearly structured into digital portfolios and buildings, so that all data is always up-to-date. The evaluation is presented to the user in a clear and understandable way, so that every private user can also benefit from it.
Whilst our main focus is providing technical means to build and renovate in a sustainable, economically sound way, we believe that fighting climate change also is a key tool for inclusive societies.
Environmental risks are potentially higher for areas with low-income populations with higher cost pressure for buildings. Our platform provides tools to monitor and reuse materials in a sustainable way, which ultimately allows to increase the living standard of low-income areas, too. Climate change will specifically have a negative impact on poorer areas and its inhabitants and extreme cases destroy their living environment.
madaster seeks to mitigate these effects to allow for truly inclusive societies. Making data available furthermore allows to include stakeholders and citizens via a simple and standardized exchange of information and data that can be used in a variety of ways. In the case of the Huthmacher building, the existing building could thus be documented and ultimately preserved as an important resource. In the case of the Rockywood in Offenbach, it was also possible to simulate various construction methods in advance with regard to ecological and economic factors. Thanks to the information available on the madaster platform, the various interests of the client and architect could be discussed, which led to a joint solution that was satisfactory for everyone. Through the material register, all actors along the value chain are involved in interacting with each other and gaining equal access to resources. Furthermore, madaster is based on a foundation so that the idea is always in the centre, madaster cannot be bought and sustainable and resource-efficient design is affordable for everyone.
madaster visualises knowledge and thus establishes transparency in the construction industry in order to counteract greenwashing. This is achieved by providing an open interface to digitally share the stored information with commodity and product marketplaces, enabling a true circular economy. The added value for citizens, businesses, government organizations, research, and educational institutions, lies in the simple and standardized exchange of information and data that can be used in a variety of ways: From using material passports and supporting circular marketplaces to citizen participation and regional resource strategies. The madaster platform simultaneously makes a positive contribution to society by providing information about the raw materials and materials used in our living environment. The platform supports analyses in different life cycles and is scalable from a local to a regional, national, and international platform.
Although the stored data is owned by the building owner to guarantee data security standards within madaster, we will provide an overview (Area Register) of the anthropogenic storage of building materials and products to the public and official bodies. The Area Register includes a search functionality on object level (construction objects, products and materials), area level (where are what objects) and time level (when can material flows be expected). This enables society and politics to organize material streams and to adjust legislation in order to implement a circular economy. This overview of already built materials is missing so far and thus madaster is the key element to enable society to use materials indefinitely.
Among architects and planners, our clients include firms such as Caspar, Ripkens Wiesenkämper, ATP Architekten, kadawittfeldarchitektur, HPP Architekten, David Chipperfield Architects and Partner und Partner Architekten. With Arup and Drees & Sommer, large consulting firms work with us. In addition to these, construction companies and developers such as Zech, Lindner, List, Interboden, Edge, Art Invest and many more already use the madaster platform. Large portfolio holders such as Vonovia, Allianz, Commerz Real, Garbe and Bayerische Hausbau have already documented parts of their portfolios on the madaster platform. madaster is also already being used in the public sector with the Viersen and Lippe districts, the city of Heidelberg and Düsseldorf or the city of Munich. And manufacturers such as Saint Gobain, Trilux, Schüco, Holcim and many more, use madaster to upload and trace their products.
Various workshops are held at regular intervals to discuss topics such as inventory analysis, circularity assessment or financial assessments of residual raw material values with the various stakeholders. There, experience can be exchanged and practical solutions to problems that arise in the implementation of a circular economy in the building sector are efficiently worked on. During this, a broad interdisciplinary expert knowledge is built upon.
In addition, madaster is in exchange with the DGNB and DIN in order to be able to generate a standard in the future. Cooperations with measurement specialists for existing buildings and other tools serve to improve the enrichment and provision of data on madaster and thus lead to a more differentiated assessment.
Not to be forgotten is the international network in Europe with the already active six countries that regularly exchange information and benefit from each other and the view into the future and the establishment of the material register in other countries.
In order to map the entire value chain and to be able to act better, our team has an interdisciplinary structure. This leads to an enormous increase in knowledge and further development of the platform. It also strengthens the interaction with the various stakeholders. As the managing director of madaster Germany, my academic and professional experience in Life Cycle Assessment in the built environment and in Real Estate Valuation have prepared me well for my current role. I determine the strategic direction of our initiative in Germany, manage our team and represent us at public appearances. Around me I have a strong young, ambitious yet knowledge rich team. As Senior Product Manager, Claudius Frank drives the further development of the madaster platform. Prior to madaster, Claudius was one of the driving forces behind the development of Drees & Sommer’s EPEA Building Circularity Passport. Katrin Bahlo, with professional experience in digital consulting, supports Claudius as a Product Manager and takes care of the manufacturers. The product management team is supported by Luisa Limbach, a civil engineering student and expert in BIM. Christian Blanke who recently joined our team and gained professional experience in market research, is focusing on research projects and product development in compliance with our international colleagues. I am complemented in Business Development by our Business Development Manager, Franziska Albrecht. As an architect and with a degree in business communication, she brings everything she needs to spread the idea of madaster among our society and to establish the Circular Economy in the construction and real estate industry. With Friederike Motzkus, who studied architecture, is a trained draftswoman, and is currently doing her master’s in resource-efficient and sustainable building, we are also actively supported by one student employee. Moreover, we have a team of 30 international colleagues whit whom we interact on a weekly basis.
Since November 2021, the madaster platform and the digital building passport have been accessible to all companies in the construction and real estate industry as well as to the public sector. Just 2 years after madaster Germany was founded, we have already documented more than 900 buildings on the madaster platform in Germany. These include projects such as "The Cradle" in Düsseldorf, “Rockywood” in Offenbach and “The Huthmacher” in Berlin. As the first version of the material register, we have launched the 'Area Register'. This is already being used by parts of the public sector. With the city of Heidelberg and Munich, the first larger cities in Germany are also in the process of creating a regional material cadastre with the help of madaster. The potential of madaster is huge and can be applied to the entire construction sector. In the Netherlands there are already some deconstruction examples where the madaster platform had been applied to.
Representative for the circular economy is our partner network consisting of 106 leading companies in the construction and real estate industry, from building material manufacturers to deconstruction contractors. It serves as a network of different players from all disciplines who want to work together to make construction more CO2- and resource-friendly, and thus forms the first ever circular value chain for sustainable and resource-efficient construction. madaster is already included in LEED certification and the DGNB is also increasing the importance of a building passport.
A tangible success is the planning and design of "The Cradle" in Düsseldorf that is planned and implemented in a purely circular way with the help of madaster and the application of the circularity index in the design and construction phase. This made it possible to measurably reduce CO2 emissions for the first time and to use primarily renewable primary raw materials and recycled secondary raw materials.
The innovative character is that already existing information is further processed in the digital twin to store the materials used in buildings. A unique feature is that madaster automatically processes the IFC files (BIM software) and enriches them with data from other public and non-public sources.
Through this approach, we minimize the additional effort and at the same time enable the stored data to be further used in other processes (see integration of external partners). The information stored on the madaster platform is linked to other databases and automatically exported to a building passport. The building passport contains information about the quality of the materials, their locations, and their financial and circular value. At the same time, it provides insights into the deconstruction and reuse potential, whilst the data is secure and remains the property of the building owner.
Apart from the individual building level, madaster allows aggregated material information on a city or regional level and thus creates added value that cannot be provided by the individual architects or owners.
This makes madaster a key player in the new Circular Real Estate digital ecosystem. Many of the current providers of building passports base them on newly collected data, which is then stored in Excel data sheets or documents. In contrast, the material information on madaster is stored dynamically and can be adapted to new findings and circumstances at any time.
In addition, a comparison of variants of different construction methods can already be carried out dynamically in real time from service phase 3 in the construction industry and thus the best possible solution can be found.
madaster sees itself as part of a new ecosystem – Circular Real Estate. As a platform solution, madaster offers external partners the possibility to contribute to the improvement of the BIM models and to offer further services via the platform (e.g. LCA, marketplace, urban mining, etc.). In order to support these external partners and to further develop the platform, we have established our own development team in madaster Shared Services B.V.
Additionally, we communicate continuously with NGOs, associations, universities and politics to develop our vision and to align and exchange knowledge with other stakeholders.
A key stakeholder is science. One the one hand we are involved in several research projects regarding data storage, BIM, urban mining, common data model and circular economy. On the other hand, we provide research institutes and university with insights of madaster and licenses which can be used in workshops and seminars to provide students the ability to practice on madaster and work on own use cases. With our application for a Bauhaus prize, we seek to start a continuous dialogue with the EU institutions and help achieving the 2030 and 2050 climate goals as well as meet the requirements of the EU Taxonomy via concrete tools which already have been implemented successfully, and which are currently being rolled out in different EU Member States with a high potential of being used on a global scale.
The building passport involves all actors along the value chain and provides an understanding of which material quantities are released for reuse or recycling at which location. Materials can be exploited regionally. Based on the data from demolition and dismantling companies, building material manufacturers develop a better understanding of the production of recycled products as well as the possibility to improve existing products for recyclability (in design). At the same time, the information on released materials and components can be presented on marketplaces even before the actual deconstruction takes place, as the information is digitally available. The deconstruction process can thus be organised in a similar way to planning. On a societal level, one will benefit through "healthier" buildings that promise better air quality and cost less to build than it is currently the case due to the transportation of raw materials becoming more expensive. The transparency of data and the knowledge gained about which materials are used in a building will open unprecedented opportunities. madaster provides the basis for using the built environment as an anthropogenic storehouse. A constant enrichment and storage of data based on the international Building Information Model (BIM) format is designed to be scalable and applied in further countries and regions under the same conditions.
In addition, the building passport system can be extended to the infrastructure sector. In the future, for example, all local and long-distance transport networks can be included in the cadastre, documented and are open for reuse and recycling. In addition, the building passport system can also be projected onto landscape design, that we develop a better awareness of our existing materials and use, re-use and recycle them more carefully.
The Kyoto Agreement and the UN Paris Climate Agreement leave no doubt: we must reduce CO2 emissions to ensure the survival of humans, animals and the planet. In the European Union, it was therefore decided in 2022 that we must achieve a reduction in CO2 emissions of at least 55% by 2030. madaster believes that these targets can only be achieved if policies require all sectors to use materials in circles. Moreover, existing raw material shortages and resource scarcity force us to act. The solution that madaster offers with the digital library of materials and products and its associated comprehensive database is an important tool to realise this. The material register will drive the digitalization and create transparency about material and product flows within the building sector. Through the documentation of buildings and the information generated from it, e.g. the carbon footprint of buildings, madaster serves as a central solution for the transformation from a linear to a circular economy.
From our headquarters in Berlin, we want to scale our solution. We show, that circular economy combines a high quality of life and good economic with climate protection measures. By starting to think locally about renovation and new construction, as well as our choice of materials and construction methods for buildings such as the examples mentioned above (Huthmacher, The Cradle, Rockywood), and by using existing resources and quantifying this on a global level, we are a substantial player on the way to a climate-neutral future.
