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Dr tech Anna-Vera Deinhammer

Partner at Airport City Consultants

Focus areas

Sustainability, Circular Economy, Knowledge, Communication, Strategy, Stakeholder, Academic & research guidance, Circular real-estate economics, ESG
Anna-Vera Deinhammer is an integral engineering scientist (Dipl.-Ing. in architecture, Dr.techn.) with a foundation in architectural theory and lightweight-structures research, working at the interface of circular economy, building regulation and real-estate value. Since 2023 she holds the Endowed Chair for Sustainable Real Estate Development at FHWien der WKW (University of Applied Sciences for Management and Communication), the first professorship of the institution financed entirely by the real-estate industry (FH-Professorin title conferred October 2024). She reads circularity and regulation as economics: material as an asset, non-circularity as a priceable risk, documentation as advantage. Her work translates regulatory and technical requirements into measurable real-estate value, following a quadruple-helix approach that connects economy, science, civil society and public administration.

Relevance for Airport Cities

Aviation real-estate portfolios worldwide face growing pressure from investors, financiers and regulators to prove their environmental performance and long-term resilience. Anna-Vera protects and increases the value of these assets by making them ESG-credible and future-proof across markets: whole-life carbon and green-asset positioning, circular real-estate economics, material resource passports and data cascades, and the adaptive reuse and urban mining of aviation land and buildings. Her command of the leading EU regulatory frameworks (Taxonomy, EPBD, CSRD), currently the most advanced reference and increasingly a template for disclosure and decarbonisation standards well beyond Europe, allows her to anticipate where these requirements are heading across regulated markets that adopt these standards and to turn compliance pressure into long-term asset value.

Current Roles

  • Endowed Chair, Sustainable Real Estate Development, FHWien der WKW (2023–2028; 70 % research / 30 % teaching)
  • Vice President & Director for Circular Cities and Regions, Circular Economy Forum Austria (member since 2022, elected Vice President 2023)
  • Member, Global Advisory Council for SDG 11, G100 (Group of 100 Global Women Leaders)
  • Strategic Partner, architecture studio BFA × KLK (since 2025)

Flagship Project

  • Project Manager, KRAISBAU: lead project on AI-supported circular construction, commissioned by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructure (BMIMI) and administered by the FFG; approx. €4 million funding volume; 32 partner organisations and approx. 90 team members across Austria (2024–2028)

Signature Method & Tools

  • WICKED: her proprietary four-layer decision method for wicked problems (morphological analysis following Zwicky, AHP/ANP following Saaty, second-order cybernetics following von Foerster), delivered as a facilitated workshop with a purpose-built digital tool (Airport City Edition)
  • EU Taxonomy QuickCheck: developed at FHWien der WKW with Raiffeisen Bank International; a structured screening against the Substantial Contribution to Climate Change Mitigation criterion for the three building activities new construction, renovation and acquisition, based on data from the energy performance certificate, for banks, developers and portfolio managers (featured in Der Börsianer)
  • Documented regulatory-foresight record: 24 validated forecasts on EU building regulation and real-estate markets, an ~80 % hit rate in these volatile regulatory times (conservatively assessed, 2023–2025)

Selected Keynotes & Engagements

  • Keynote, 32nd ERES Annual Conference 2026 (TU Wien): Renovation as the Core Asset Strategy (real options, brown discount, information economics), noted as a conference highlight
  • European Forum Alpbach, "Shaping Urban Futures" (2024): conceived and led STRABAG's circular-construction workshops and the Soravia workshop; developed the format and moderated the EFA closing in Vienna
  • European Forum Alpbach 2025, Clean Industrial Deal Lab: expert at the Lab Turning Green Transition into Economic Opportunity: Cities, Industry and Finance for the Clean Industrial Deal; convened representatives of Austrian industry
  • Keynote, Circular Economy Forum Austria Nordics programme (2025): Sustainable, Smart & Circular Cities of the Future, alongside the Nordic ambassadors to Austria
  • Panellist, United Nations event, Vienna (2025): the role of women in the circular economy
  • Urban Future / Better Cities, Łódź (2025): conceived, prepared and led two sessions, Retrofitting: Focus on Skills, How to Close the Skills Gap and Heritage vs. Modernisation: Defining the Role of Heritage in Urban Renewal
  • Jury member, Superscape Award 2024 (architecture prize)

Selected Career History

  • Austrian Sustainable Building Council (ÖGNI): Strategic Advisor for International Affairs, R&D and Municipalities (2022–2025); delegate to the World Green Building Council and the Climate Positive Europe Alliance, Brussels
  • City of Vienna, Executive Group for Construction and Technology: Head of Coordination Unit Resource Conservation & Sustainability in Construction (2021–2022); Decreed Coordinator for Circular Economy in Construction (2020–2022); Founder & Head, DoTank Circular City Vienna 2020–2030 (2020–2022); Senior Technical Expert, Integral Engineering & Building Research (2016–2020)
  • Zweikanal e.U.: Founder (2010–2016); research, design and technical office (supported by the Vienna Business Agency) for barrier-free accessibility consulting (Design for All), vertical-greening feasibility studies, and timber, system and membrane-structure development

Education

  • Dr.techn., Integral Engineering: TU Wien, Faculty of Civil Engineering, in cooperation with the Lightweight Structures Research Unit, UNSW Sydney; thesis on the morphological evaluation of lightweight structures; graduated with distinction
  • Dipl.-Ing., Architecture: TU Wien; graduated with distinction

Standards & Advisory

  • Austrian Standards Institute Committee 271 "Sustainability of buildings": via ÖGNI (2022–2025), re-nominated via the Circular Economy Forum Austria (from autumn 2026)
  • Former Chair, Big Buyers Initiative (via ICLEI / EUROCITIES), and representative to DG GROW and DG ENV of the European Commission, for the City of Vienna (until 2022)
  • Visiting Academic: UNSW Sydney, IIT Chicago, IUAV Venezia, University of Stuttgart (ILEK), Sapienza Roma, a. o.

Publications (selected)

  • Peer-reviewed chapter Governing the Transition to Circular Economy and Liveable Cities (Huber-Heim, Laszlo & Deinhammer), Cambridge University Press (2025), the scholarly anchor of the WICKED method
  • Chapter Kreislaufwirtschaft im Bauwesen: Transformation der Bauindustrie durch gebündelte Expertise und zirkuläre Innovationen, in SDG 8: Menschenwürdige Arbeit und Wirtschaftswachstum (series Globale Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung), Springer Gabler (2025; ISBN 978-3-662-70472-1)
  • Chapter Führung und Governance für zirkuläre Sanierung: Stakeholderprozesse im Kontext der europäischen Renovierungswelle, in Schneider & Schmidpeter (eds.), Corporate Social Responsibility: Verantwortungsvolle Unternehmensführung in Theorie und Praxis (Management-Reihe Corporate Social Responsibility, 3rd ed.), Springer Gabler (forthcoming)
  • Lead editor and author (Deinhammer/Engert/Wehrberger, Hrsg.), Handbuch Nachhaltigkeit in der Bau- und Immobilienwirtschaft: Ein Leitfaden für die Transformation in eine zukunftsfitte Branche (Linde, 2024; ISBN 978-3-7073-5061-6)
  • 61 research outputs in 31 months (2023–2025): predominantly practice-oriented publications for the real-estate and construction sector, alongside conference talks and expert events

 

Team