Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemEmbodied emissions analysis of emerging construction technologies for mass housing in India(The University of Melbourne, 2019)The construction and use of buildings is responsible for a significant proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions. With global population growth continuing unabated, alongside increasing living standards in developing regions, this is predicted to continue. While global efforts to reduce the emissions associated with buildings have achieved significant operational efficiencies and emissions savings, buildings still represent a considerable opportunity for achieving the deep cuts in emissions that are needed to avoid the predicted catastrophic consequences of climate change. With the embodied emissions of buildings accounting for an increasingly significant proportion of a building’s life cycle emissions, and this being of little focus to date, this is one area in which some of these emissions cuts could be achieved. The Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) of India have developed a list of potential building construction technologies aimed at improving the performance of housing in India. While these are assessed across a number of parameters, their embodied emissions are often not considered. This study assesses the embodied emissions of these technologies with the aim of determining whether they offer a potential solution for reducing building embodied emissions compared to more traditional housing construction. It was found that the proposed emerging technologies may increase the embodied emissions associated with housing by up to 400% when compared to more conventional forms of construction.
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ItemTowards a design framework for the structural systems of tall buildings that considers embodied greenhouse gas emissions(CRC Press, 2019-07-29)During the 1960s, the Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect Fazlur Rahman Khan proposed an influential design framework for the structural systems of tall buildings titled premium-for-height. Khan argued that the challenge of a structural engineer is to design structural systems that minimise the increase in structural material weight per gross floor area with increasing building height. However, in meeting the challenges of climate change and urbanisation, minimising the embodied environmental flows of tall buildings must also be a priority in structural design frameworks. This paper proposes to expand the premium-for-height framework for tall buildings by considering the embodied greenhouse gas emissions of structural systems using a hybrid life cycle inventory analysis method. Advanced structural analysis and a comprehensive consideration of building parameters are also proposed. To demonstrate the use and potential of the framework, embodied greenhouse gas emissions of six case study tall buildings are analysed. The results arediscussed and recommendations are made to improve the reliability of the more comprehensive framework.
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ItemA comprehensive database of environmental flow coefficients for construction materials: closing the loop in environmental design(The Architectural Science Association, 2019)Life cycle assessment is increasingly used to quantify and reduce the environmental effects of buildings. Embodied environmental effects, resulting from material production and replacement as well as construction, are typically quantified using coefficients from readily available databases. However, most existing databases of embodied environmental coefficients for construction materials suffer from limitations, such as inconsistency in the life cycle inventory method used or system boundary incompleteness. This paper introduces a new database of hybrid environmental flow coefficients for construction materials, covering flows of energy, water and greenhouse gas emissions for over 100 common construction materials. The hybrid approach used combines bottom-up industrial process data and top-down macroeconomic input-output data, making it more comprehensive than process analysis and more accurate and specific than input-output analysis alone. A case study building is used to demonstrate the importance of using hybrid coefficients for improving environmental performance. This study shows that the use of process coefficients can lead to a significant underestimation of the total environmental effects associated with the construction of a building, by up to 64%. This has considerable implications for decision-making relating to building design, including the focus of improvement efforts. This database of coefficients will enable building professionals to more effectively analyse and improve the environmental performance of buildings. This will also help inform the focus of environmental policy and improve the implementation of life cycle thinking in environmental design.