Building floorspace and stock measurement: A review of global efforts, knowledge gaps, and research priorities

Minda Ma, Shufan Zhang, Junhong Liu, Ran Yan, Weiguang Cai, Nan Zhou and Jinyue Yan

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Despite a substantial body of research-evidenced by our analysis of 2,628 peer-reviewed papers-global building floorspace data remain fragmented, inconsistent, and methodologically diverse. The lack of high-quality and openly accessible datasets poses major challenges to accurately assessing building carbon neutrality. This review focuses on global building floorspace, especially its nexus with energy and emissions. The key research areas include energy modeling, emissions analysis, building retrofits, and life cycle assessments. Each measurement approach-top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid-has its own limitations: top-down methods provide broad estimates but low accuracy, whereas bottom-up approaches are more precise but data intensive. Our simulations reveal a surge in floorspace growth across emerging economies-most notably in India, Indonesia, and Africa-with India's per capita floorspace projected to triple by 2070. We emphasize the need for a high-resolution global floorspace imagery database to compare energy efficiency, track decarbonization progress, and assess renovation impacts while promoting building sufficiency and accelerating the transition to net-zero building systems.

Date: 2025-03, Revised 2025-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.05824 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2503.05824

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().