A Fine-Grained Dataset of Material Usage in Buildings to Increase Material Efficiency

Summary: “I'm studying material use in new construction in cities, focusing on low-rise, high-density residential buildings. This work is motivated by simultaneous crises in housing availability and environmental degradation partly due to resource overuse. It forms part of an ongoing project in Professor Shoshanna Saxe’s group to identify existing options for building and city design that reduce material demand while maintaining function. Presently, data available in this field is very poor, limiting possible studies. My work focuses on developing the world’s first image-based infrastructure material analysis data set, with over a hundred buildings measured thus far.”