Performance assessment of urban precinct design: a scoping study

Executive Summary: Significant advances have been made over the past decade in the development of scientifically and industry accepted tools for the performance assessment of buildings in terms of energy, carbon, water, indoor environment quality etc. For resilient, sustainable low carbon urban development to be realised in the 21st century, however, will require several radical transitions in design performance beyond the scale of individual buildings. One of these involves the creation and application of leading edge tools (not widely available to built environment professions and practitioners) capable of being applied to an assessment of performance across all stages of development at a precinct scale (neighbourhood, community and district) in either greenfield, brownfield or greyfield settings. A core aspect here is the development of a new way of modelling precincts, referred to as Precinct Information Modelling (PIM) that provides for transparent sharing and linking of precinct object information across the development life cycle together with consistent, accurate and reliable access to reference data, including that associated with the urban context of the precinct. Neighbourhoods are the ‘building blocks’ of our cities and represent the scale at which urban design needs to make its contribution to city performance: as productive, liveable, environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive places (COAG 2009). Neighbourhood design constitutes a major area for innovation as part of an urban design protocol established by the federal government (Department of Infrastructure and Transport 2011, see Figure 1). The ability to efficiently and effectively assess urban design performance at a neighbourhood level is in its infancy. This study was undertaken by Swinburne University of Technology, University of New South Wales, CSIRO and buildingSMART Australasia on behalf of the CRC for Low Carbon Living

A design framework for enabling sustainability in the clothing sector

This article discusses general strategies to enable environmental sustainability within the clothing sector, providing a framework for decision makers involved in the development of programs and policies for this sector. It initially revises the environmental impact of the clothing system and determines its key environmental sustainability priorities. The framework involves five evolutionary strategies for enabling sustainable consumption and production: 1) environmental improvement of flows throughout the supply chain; 2) environmental redesign of existing clothes; 3) design of new clothes intrinsically more sustainable; 4) design of cloth-service systems and 5) promoting life styles towards sufficient consumption. The practical implications of each strategy is analysed based on correspondent ex-post-facto case studies identified in Brazil, using data collected through literature review and desktop research

Development of a carbon emission calculations system for optimizing building plan based on the LCA framework

Life cycle thinking has become widely applied in the assessment for building environmental performance. Various tool are developed to support the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) method. This paper focuses on the carbon emission during the building construction stage. A partial LCA framework is established to assess the carbon emission in this phase. Furthermore, five typical LCA tools programs have been compared and analyzed for demonstrating the current application of LCA tools and their limitations in the building construction stage. Based on the analysis of existing tools and sustainability demands in building, a new computer calculation system has been developed to calculate the carbon emission for optimizing the sustainability during the construction stage. The system structure and detail functions are described in this paper. Finally, a case study is analyzed to demonstrate the designed LCA framework and system functions. This case is based on a typical building in UK with different plans of masonry wall and timber frame to make a comparison. The final results disclose that a timber frame wall has less embodied carbon emission than a similar masonry structure. 16% reduction was found in this study

Modern Management: Good for the Environment of Just Hot Air?

We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the UK. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better managed firms are significantly less energy intensive. They use less energy per unit of output, and also in relation to other factor inputs. This is quantitatively substantial: going from the 25th to the 75th percentile of management practices is associated with a 17.4% reduction in energy intensity. This negative relationship is robust to a variety of controls for industry, location, technology and other factor inputs. Better managed firms are also significantly more productive. One interpretation of these results is that well managed firms are adopting modern lean manufacturing practices, which allows them to increase productivity by using energy more efficiently. This suggests that improving the management practices of manufacturing firms may help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Management, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Productivity

Towards Developing a Comprehensive Carbon Accounting Framework for Forests in British Columbia

This report concentrates on the issues of establishing, managing and monitoring a forest carbon sink project within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. The work was carried out as a case study for British Columbia in Canada and one of the results is a proposed forest carbon accounting system for this Province

Impact of Plug-In Hybrid Cars

The following document has been prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements as a Bachelor of Science at WPI. The authors, Kazim Naqvi and Timothy Yee, are submitting this document as an IQP/MQP in lieu of the above mentioned requirements. The authors will address the possible impact of the advent of Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles in Massachusetts for National Grid. The authors will be utilizing Systems Dynamics Modeling as the basis for experimentation. The results of various modeling, research, and sensitivity exercises conducted during the course of this project show that PHEV\u27s do take off and attain a sustainable value, as was the desired outcome. The impact on National Grid is minimal and the daily electric demand variation does not change significantly

Impact of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles on the Local Electric Grid

The following document has been prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements as a Bachelor of Science at WPI. The authors, Kazim Naqvi and Timothy Yee, are submitting this document as an IQP/MQP in lieu of the above mentioned requirements. The authors will address the possible impact of the advent of Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles in Massachusetts for National Grid. The authors will be utilizing Systems Dynamics Modeling as the basis for experimentation. The results of various modeling, research, and sensitivity exercises conducted during the course of this project show that PHEV\u27s do take off and attain a sustainable value, as was the desired outcome. The impact on National Grid is minimal and the daily electric demand variation does not change significantly