DEEPIKA RAGHU
Selected Research
This section highlights selected research projects showcasing advancements in circular construction and sustainable practices. A comprehensive list of all publications and projects is available on Google Scholar.
URBAN-AI leverages state-of-art AI tools like GPT-4V and Grounding Dino to address the lack of building data, enabling scalable and cost-effective material inventorying across six diverse urban environments. By publicly releasing the Global Building Facade Dataset and the URBAN-AI tool, we empower stakeholders worldwide to implement circular economy strategies and advance urban sustainability.
We address the global challenge of documenting building materials by combining street-level imagery with computer vision, enabling scalable detection of facade materials with high accuracy across cities like Zurich, Tokyo, and New York. Our publicly available Urban Resource Cadastre Repository promotes future advancements in automating material reuse for a sustainable built environment.
A Review on Technologies for Addressing the Information Gap for Building Material Reuse,
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Reusing high-value construction materials is essential for achieving a circular economy, yet critical information gaps hinder its scalability. This study bridges the research-industry divide by synthesizing insights on material reuse strategies, providing a taxonomy and actionable insights to accelerate circular construction practices.
Artificial intelligence, particularly computer vision and machine learning, offers transformative potential for predicting reuse patterns in the built environment. By leveraging advancements in visual data extraction, this work highlights key opportunities and challenges in enabling circular processes and developing robust systems for a sustainable construction paradigm.
The intersection of digital transformation and circular construction enables optimized material reuse to reduce environmental impact. Through a five-step digital circular workflow validated by real-world case studies, this research demonstrates how innovative tools and technologies can scale circular economy principles in the construction industry.
India’s robust informal material reuse ecosystem plays a vital role in recycling construction waste, yet its processes remain largely unorganized and understudied. This study examines material reclamation practices in Mumbai and Bangalore, highlighting the need for government policies to integrate these systems into sustainable development and circular economy frameworks.