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Publications (111)
Facility location methods play a crucial role in specifying the optimum location options for various types of facilities. A question that arises is what makes a facility location decision a sustainable one? Facility location, also known as location analysis, is a known concept in the literature, but sustainable facility location is not. This requir...
It is projected that about 30% of the world’s major cities will face severe water stress and urban drought from 2050 if climate change continues and has the anticipated effects (Florke et al, 2018; www.wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net). Socio-economic drought, meaning water shortage in urban life, can have significant effects on a city’s inhabitants, i...
While there are many motivating factors for green finance (GF) implementation, a comprehensive taxonomy of these variables is lacking in the literature, especially for green buildings (GBs). This study aims to analyse the criticality and interdependence of GF-in-GB’s driving factors. This study develops a valid set of factors to justify the interre...
With the country facing a shortage of affordable homes, manufactured housing is an option offering significant cost savings over traditional homes. In addition, manufactured housing has the potential to lower the environmental impacts, in particular, the embodied carbon of residential buildings. Consequently, investigating the environmental perform...
Since perspectives on higher education are continually changing, curriculum must reflect the current needs of industry. However, individual perspectives may differ based on one’s background and social position. The purpose of this study was to strengthen the course content of the master’s programs in Construction Management at the University of Flo...
Setting up workable budgets symbolizes the competence of state highway agencies (SHAs) in fulfilling their responsibilities, and unreliable cost estimates can cause economic and political complications. The unclear scope definition and scarcity of project information available at early stages make it hard to generate reliable preliminary estimates....
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has the potential to inform building decisions from the planning process to conceptual design. As such, there is intrinsic uncertainty that needs to be explored further to allow proper decisions. These uncertainties may be related to parameter definition such as Life Cycle Inventory or model as service life definition. T...
The construction industry has significant environmental impacts by consuming natural resources, generating waste, and emitting greenhouse gases (GHG) that lead to global warming and climate change. Globally, in 2018 the building sector accounted for 39% of energy and process related CO2 emissions. The residential sector contributes to a significant...
Research Team FHC-02 conducted two case studies to illustrate how Triple Bottom Line (TBL) analysis can help organizations outgrow the traditional dependence on first costs to guide design decisions. TBL’s life cycle calculations help decision-makers see the long-term superiority of the high-performance systems used in these two new buildings by co...
Service life plays an important role that has a significant influence on life cycle impacts of the building operation phase, especially as operational energy impacts are being reduced through energy efficiency and renewal energy. In this context, uncertainty analysis of service life models is crucial for reliable building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA...
Occupant behaviors are one of the most dominant factors that influence building energy use. Understanding the influences from building occupants can promote the development of energy–efficient buildings. This paper quantifies the impact of different occupant behavior information on building energy model (BEM) from multiple perspectives. For this pu...
Purpose
As green building movement is widespread throughout the world, low-energy building becomes the standard. A designer's selection of building systems and materials during early design phase becomes more important. It is essential that designers include embodied energy and emissions among other criteria they use in selecting materials during t...
Occupant behaviors are one of the dominant factors that influence building energy use. Traditional building energy modeling programs use typical occupant schedules that often do not reflect actual situations. Robust occupant behavior modeling that seamlessly integrates with building energy models will not only improve simulation performance, but al...
When managing the energy performance of a portfolio of buildings over time, climate change can be a threat as it can cause significant changes in energy use patterns. This paper uses artificial intelligence techniques to develop an AI-based forecasting tool, Campus Energy Use Prediction (CEUP) that can help managers to forecast campus future monthl...
The energy and environmental footprints associated with buildings are significant. Worldwide, buildings and construction account for over one-third of the final energy use, and China leads the world in total building floor area. China is experiencing rapid urbanization, which has, and will continue, to yield strong demand for buildings, exerting su...
Studies have shown the influence of building occupants on building energy use. However, current building energy simulation tools lack dynamic and realistic occupant information inputs in modeling. The development of a robust occupant behavior model that can generate occupant schedules for use in building energy simulation algorithms will have the p...
Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions related to spectator's transportation to collegiate football events is a significant consideration in the overall carbon footprint of collegiate sporting events. Transportation mode affects CO 2 emissions per spectator and stadium location, specifically on-and off-campus locations affect the transportation mode chose...
Building occupants are one of the most dominant variable factors in building energy consumption. However, current building performance simulation engines incorporate occupant information as simple, static profiles, which lead to discrepancy in actual energy use as occupants interact with building systems in an active manner, i.e., occupant behavior...
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software is used to analyze rainwater harvesting potential in Escambia County, Florida, USA. The approach presented can be replicated using LiDAR data, and the infrared spectrum of National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery. GIS surface maps are analyzed in combination with local utility consumption dat...
American College Test (ACT) and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have been part of the admission requirements for many Construction Science and Management (CSM) undergraduate educational programs in the United States of America (USA). This is because academic programs and admission committees tend to believe that these scores could aid in pred...
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a modeling and decision-making framework for organizational sustainability excellence of construction firms. This research aims to find how construction organizations can achieve excellence in terms of corporate sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper first reviews the literature of organizationa...
Purpose
This paper aims to find out how construction organizations can achieve excellence and enhance excellence through knowledge and workforce management. The combination of knowledge and workforce management, referred to here as the People Capability, is the key area of concern in this study.
Design/methodology/approach
The European Foundatio...
The accuracy of energy estimation using building energy models is contingent on user inputs. Depending on the situation, energy models may use plug-load densities that are unsubstantiated for the specific building type and space conditions. A common standard in the literature lists plug-load density for educational facilities as 1 W=square foot ðsf...
Purpose
This study examines the use of inferential statistics, specifically multivariate correlation and regression, as a means of interpreting LCA data. It is believed that these methods provide additional context in understanding data and results, and may serve as a way to present the uncertain results that are inherent to LCA.
Methods
Nine buil...
Purpose
This study examines the utility of descriptive statistics and factor analysis in the interpretation of an LCA data set. It is believed that the use of descriptive statistics and factor analysis provides a comprehensive summary of the data, and insight on internal validity, which improves interpretation of results. The current study also pro...
Value engineering (VE) can provide value in projects by improving the performance, quality, and saving on cost of systems. However, some bias may occur in the VE application. In this research, the value methodology was analyzed and over-emphasis on cost was identified as a limitation in the conventional VE. Specifically, the aim of the research was...
Some construction management (CM) programs in the United States of America (USA) use Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores as part of their graduate admission requirements because they tend to believe that the exam can predict academic performance and success of students. A study was conducted in the southeastern and central part of the USA with...
Building has complex supply chains involving different sectors in a national economy. Although input-output life cycle inventory (I-O LCI) model enables economy-wide footprint calculations, the model is vulnerable to sector aggregation and is thus unsuitable for individual product analysis. This study employed a disaggregated I-O LCI model that div...
Typical Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP) too often focus exclusively on either upstream or downstream impacts while failing to connect this to a scale appropriate for integration in building assessments. A solution to this problem would offer a framework of tools to map the full scope of WWTP impacts, both u...
Graduate admission committees in some construction management graduate educational programs in the United States may sometimes require students to take and submit their GRE scores as part of the admission requirements. This is because they tend to believe that the GRE scores could predict the academic performance and success of students in graduate...
China has the world's largest shale gas reserves, which might enable it to pursue a new pathway for electricity generation. This study employed hybrid LCI (life cycle inventory) models to quantify the ETW (extraction-to-wire) GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and water consumption per kWh of coal- and shale gas-fired electricity in China. Results sugg...
GRE scores have been part of graduate admission requirements for both domestic and international students in some construction management educational programs in the USA because academic committees tend to believe that it predicts academic performance and success of students. This study assessed the predictive ability of admission GRE scores on cum...
The healthcare industry has begun to examine the role, impacts, and implications of healthcare facilities on people's health inside and outside their walls. This article reports a snapshot of findings from a multi-year research project of a new green Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. It identifies key data analysis areas and a method that can be u...
Traditionally, building rating systems focused on, among others, energy used during operational stage. Recently, there is a strong push by these rating systems to include the life cycle energy use of buildings, particularly using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), by offering credits that can be used to achieve higher certification levels. As LCA-based t...
Tapping its large reserves of unconventional gas, China has launched shale gas exploration and started drilling wells in trial development zones. To better understand the potential energy and air pollution implications of shale gas production in China, this study developed a hybrid life cycle inventory (LCI) model that combines process and input–ou...
Input–output life cycle assessment (I-O LCA) is a tool for calculating the product chain impacts of goods and services in an economic system. However, specificity and accuracy of model results is compromised by sectoral aggregation in I-O tables. Based on the 135- and 42-sector 2007 Chinese economic benchmark data, this study developed two disaggre...
Models of buildings in life cycle assessment (LCA) often use simple descriptions of operational energy, maintenance, and material replacement. The scope of many building LCAs is often limited and uses assumptions such as building lifetimes of 30 to 50 years. In actuality, building lifetimes vary considerably, and scenarios using standard assumption...
An ongoing research project aims to define a set of quality metrics for the capital facilities delivery industry that can be used effectively throughout a project life cycle to benchmark project performance. Predetermined and standardized quality metrics can provide industry with a tool to be able to assess compliance, drive improvement and ultimat...
In the context of rapid urbanization and new construction in rural China, residential building energy consumption has the potential to increase with the expected increase in demand. A process-based hybrid life-cycle assessment model is used to quantify the life-cycle energy use for both urban and rural residential buildings in China and determine t...
Life cycle assessments (LCAs) of buildings often use an operational lifetime of approximately 50 years, and have simplified descriptions of building operations and maintenance. The typical service life period is inappropriate for some materials given their exposure and use, and the simplified descriptions do not fully represent maintenance, repair...
The American College and University President's Climate Commitment program has created a set of planning guidelines for their member institutions to use to develop strategic plans to reach campus-wide carbon neutrality before 2050. As small planned communities, colleges and universities represent a unique opportunity for study: campuses have motiva...
Due to the lack of energy intensity data for building materials and the high integration of the construction sector in national input–output tables, applications of conventional process-based life cycle inventory (LCI) and input–output (I–O) LCI models are hindered in China. This study developed a process-based hybrid LCI model to calculate the emb...
Sustainable watershed management is a multi-stakeholder and a multi-faceted process. A watershed is an essential resource to the existence of human systems as well as ecological systems. Competing water needs of human systems and development activities has led to various conflicts among the users and has imposed a threat to ecological systems. Conf...
With rapid social development and large-scale construction of infrastructure in China, construction projects have become one of the driving forces for the national economy, whose energy consumption, environmental emissions, and social impacts are significant. To completely understand the role of construction projects in Chinese society, this study...
A complete understanding of the resource consumption, embodied energy, and environmental emissions of civil projects in China is difficult due to the lack of comprehensive national statistics. To quantitatively assess the energy and environmental impacts of civil construction at a macro-level, this study developed a 24 sector environmental input-ou...
This research examined the environmental impacts due to the construction phase of commercial buildings. Previous building research has often overlooked the construction phase and focused on the material and use phases, discounting the significant environmental impacts of construction. The research was conducted using life-cycle assessment (LCA) met...
Purpose
Sustainable housing and community recovery processes in the aftermath of tsunamis have to cope with direct impacts, such as fatalities, destroyed buildings, and loss of economic assets, as well as indirect impacts caused by shortcomings in recovery management. Recent studies on post‐tsunami recovery tend to focus on direct impacts, ranging...
Quality Management Systems in the capital facilities delivery industry were examined to identify best practices. The research surveyed 118 owner, contractor and supplier firms, performed statistical analysis of the responses, and conducted targeted structured interviews with 17 firms. The survey revealed several statistically significant areas wher...
Cost and time are the traditional criteria for selecting heavy equipment for construction tasks. However, non-road diesel-powered construction equipment can have health and environmental effects. For example, particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel engines impact local air quality, carbon dioxide emissions lead to climate change...
The Florida Turnpike Enterprise (FTE) has the bold vision of maximizing the use of renewable energy in their operations and potentially supplying all the energy needs of their facilities via solar technologies. A University of Florida research team collaborated with FTE and Florida Department of Transportation staff to examine contemporary solar te...
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com With over forty years' experience, Emerald Group Publishing is a leading independent publisher of global research with impact in business, society, public policy and education. In total, Emerald publishes over 275 journals and more than 130 book series, as well as an extensive range of online products and servic...
Many older cities have antiquated sewer systems that are unable to accommodate increasing amounts of impervious surface runoff from urban expansion. Excess stormwater runoff often causes systems to become overwhelmed resulting in untreated raw sewage spills into lakes, streams, and
rivers.Installation of green roofs addresses this problem by using...
Development planning and implementation is a multifaceted and multiscale task mainly because of the involvement of multiple stakeholders across sectors and disciplines. Even though top-down sectoral planning is commonly practiced, bottom-up cross-sectoral planning involving all relevant stakeholders in a transdisciplinary learning environment has b...
Background, aim, and scope
Traditional life cycle impact assessment methodologies have used aggregated characterization factors, neglecting spatial and temporal variations in regional impacts like photochemical oxidant formation. This increases the uncertainty of the LCA results and diminishes the ease of decision-making. This study compares four c...
Development planning and implementation is a multifaceted and multiscale task mainly because of the involvement of multiple stakeholders across sectors and disciplines. Even though top-down sectoral planning is commonly practiced, bottom-up cross-sectoral planning involving all relevant stakeholders in a transdisciplinary learning environment has b...
A prototype green roof was constructed and monitored in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to demonstrate a way to reduce storm water runoff and combined sewer overflow (CSO) events. The large impervious surface area created by urban development in Pittsburgh creates a wet weather flow that the existing combined waste waster and storm water sewer system can...
Healthcare facilities are among the most complicated facilities to plan, design, construct and operate. A new breed of hospitals is considering the impact of the built environment on healthcare worker productivity and patient recovery in their design, construction, and operation. A crucial subset of healthcare facilities are children's hospitals wh...
According to the targets set for sustainability, integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs is one of the main goals for development projects. A major challenge in the development field is cross-sectoral integrated planning and achieving multi-stakeholder consensus for collaborative joint projects, espe...
Heating and cooling systems consume the most energy and are the largest source of emissions in the entire life cycle of a house. This study compares the life cycle impacts of three residential heating and cooling systems—warm-air furnace and air-conditioner, hot water boiler and air-conditioner, and air–air heat pump over a 35-year study period. Si...
The design and construction industries have an increasing interest in and responsibility for a building's environmental effects over its entire life cycle. Quantification of all building phases is important in life-cycle assessments (LCAs), especially for the construction phase, which is often disregarded. This research uses an input-output-based L...
A life cycle optimization model intended to potentially reduce the environmental impacts of energy use in commercial buildings is presented. A combination of energy simulation, life cycle assessment, and operations research techniques are used to develop the model. In addition to conventional energy systems, such as the electric grid and a gas boil...
Aim, Scope, and BackgroundIndustrial and institutional (I and I) floor maintenance activities require regular use of chemical products and equipment.
Different floor care systems require different maintenance products, activities, and frequencies which consume different levels
of energy and material for product manufacturing, maintenance, and appli...
A new breed of environmentally sustainable hospitals is focused on enhancing the impact of the built environment. This paper describes a research effort aimed at studying the design process of children's hospitals to understand the critical steps and processes for green children's hospital design. Design data was used to build process maps to visua...
Civil engineers have contributed to sustainable development and green design issues by acknowledging their professional obligations, extend their knowledge base, and participate in all levels of policy decisions. A potential reason for sustainability in civil engineering include ASCE's Code and engineer's existing skills sets, that pursues several...
This paper describes the life cycle environmental cost characteristics of intensive and extensive green roofs versus conventional roofs. A life cycle inventory and environmental impact assessment is used to document and analyze the similarities and differences in the environmental impacts of the fabrication, transportation, installation, operation,...
Background, Aim and ScopeThe objective of this life cycle assessment (LCA) study is to develop LCA models for energy systems in order to assess the
potential environmental impacts that might result from meeting energy demands in buildings. The scope of the study includes
LCA models of the average electricity generation mix in the USA, a natural gas...
The selection of the project delivery method (PDM) for any project is critical-it establishes the communication, coordination, and contractual interfaces between the owner, contractor, and designer. With an increase in the number of green design projects, understanding the relationship between the PDM and green design is paramount to project and co...
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners build models to quantify resource consumption, environmental releases, and potential environmental and human health impacts of product systems. Most often, practitioners define a model structure, assign a single value to each parameter, and build deterministic models to approximate environmental outcomes. T...
Design and construction industries, along with owners, have an increasing interest in and responsibility for the environmental impacts of buildings. Since the environmental impacts of a building's life cycle are considerable, quantification of all phases is important, especially the construction phase, which is often glossed over. This research foc...
Multiple prime is one type of construction delivery system and it is the subject of many discussions in the industry. Many general contractors, architects, and owners believe that this system inherently has coordination problems. On the other hand, specialty contractors believe that this system has several advantages because of the exclusion of the...
Several studies suggest green construction can result in significant economic savings by improving employee productivity, increasing benefits from improvements in health and safety, and providing savings from energy, maintenance, and operational costs. This article quantifies these benefits by establishing a set of measurable performance and buildi...
This paper presents a model that is developed to optimize the selection and operation of energy systems in commercial buildings based on their environmental performance. The model can be used for decision support regarding infrastructure in both design and operation of building energy systems. The approach is composed of energy simulation to genera...
Residential building construction represented about 4.2% of the US Gross Domestic Product in 2000, and residences consumed nearly 20% of total US energy consumption. However, design and construction of residential buildings is often not conducted with an analysis of the life cycle costs and environmental impacts. In this paper, we outline an approa...
Processing technical and environmental data on building materials, components, and systems has become more important during the last few years. Increased sensitivity towards environmental and energy problems has lead to the demand for simulation and evaluation of the long term behavior of buildings. The results of such simulations are expected to e...
The purpose of this paper is to present a model that can be used for system selection and performance analysis of cogeneration systems and conventional energy systems application in commercial buildings. The approach is composed of an energy simulation model to generate a building's energy demand, a life cycle assessment (LCA) model to model differ...
Cogeneration systems offer an opportunity to satisfy a building's electrical and thermal loads, which could result in an overall energy efficiency improvement and lower environmental impact. Hourly energy simulation and a life-cycle assessment framework are used to evaluate the relative environmental impacts and energy efficiencies of the construct...
The uncertainty in environmental impact of the built environment life cycle was analyzed. A multi-aspect simulation-based approach using multiple models for environmental assessment was presented along with demonstrative analysis results. Uncertain parameters were described by a mean value, standard deviation and distribution. It was shown that the...
This paper presents an environmental impact assessment method implemented in a computational tool for the environmental evaluation of building designs. The method is an extension of a traditional material-focused life cycle analysis (LCA), and is based on a spatial allocation for emissions and resource usage. The implementation described here uses...
Computational building simulation tools have typically viewed buildings as artefacts isolated and disconnected from their contexts. At most, the external environmental conditions have been viewed as outside influences or stressors encapsulated in, for example, weather files for energy simulation or sky models for lighting simulation. To model the b...
A computational tool has been developed for the environmental evaluation of building designs. Construction and operation of buildings is a major cause of resource depletion and environmental pollution. Computational performance evaluation tools can support the decision making in the area of environmentally responsive building design and play an imp...
Computational building simulation tools have historically viewed buildings as artefacts isolated and disconnected from their contexts. At most, the external environmental conditions have been viewed as outside influences or stressors encapsulated in, for example, weather files for energy simulation or sky models for lighting simulation. In the fiel...
We present in this paper the essential aspects of the S2 system. This is the internet realization of SEMPER, an active, multi-domain, space-based, object oriented design environment for integrated building performance modeling. The key features of the S2 environment are as follows: A user can access the system regardless of the computer hardware, o...
Construction and operation of buildings is a major cause of resource depletion and environmental pollution. Computational performance evaluation tools could support the decision making process in environmentally responsive building design and play an important role in environmental impact assessment, especially when a life cycle assessment (LCA) ap...