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Evaluating the resilience and security of boundaryless, evolving socio-technical Systems of Systems
A Network Approach to Interdependent Infrastructure Resilience Assessment for Natural Hazards
Natural disasters are increasingly costly to society as they disrupt basic infrastructure functions. Infrastructure managers face challenges from growing urbanization, climate change, and aging infrastructure. Infrastructure resilience is an emerging concept that has been suggested as a solution to this problem; however, it is not yet mature. This thesis proposes to extend an existing dynamic infrastructure resilience quantification methodology to include infrastructure growth capabilities while relaxing some of the original constraints. The methodology uses a complex networks approach to model infrastructure interdependencies that is applied to a case study in the City of Toronto using a newly developed web tool
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 âbuilding blocksâ 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
Sustainability Assessment of Community Scale Integrated Energy Systems: Conceptual Framework and Applications
abstract: One of the key infrastructures of any community or facility is the energy system which consists of utility power plants, distributed generation technologies, and building heating and cooling systems. In general, there are two dimensions to âsustainabilityâ as it applies to an engineered system. It needs to be designed, operated, and managed such that its environmental impacts and costs are minimal (energy efficient design and operation), and also be designed and configured in a way that it is resilient in confronting disruptions posed by natural, manmade, or random events. In this regard, development of quantitative sustainability metrics in support of decision-making relevant to design, future growth planning, and day-to-day operation of such systems would be of great value. In this study, a pragmatic performance-based sustainability assessment framework and quantitative indices are developed towards this end whereby sustainability goals and concepts can be translated and integrated into engineering practices.
New quantitative sustainability indices are proposed to capture the energy system environmental impacts, economic performance, and resilience attributes, characterized by normalized environmental/health externalities, energy costs, and penalty costs respectively. A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment is proposed which includes externalities due to emissions from different supply and demand-side energy systems specific to the regional power generation energy portfolio mix. An approach based on external costs, i.e. the monetized health and environmental impacts, was used to quantify adverse consequences associated with different energy system components.
Further, this thesis also proposes a new performance-based method for characterizing and assessing resilience of multi-functional demand-side engineered systems. Through modeling of system response to potential internal and external failures during different operational temporal periods reflective of diurnal variation in loads and services, the proposed methodology quantifies resilience of the system based on imposed penalty costs to the system stakeholders due to undelivered or interrupted services and/or non-optimal system performance.
A conceptual diagram called âSustainability Compassâ is also proposed which facilitates communicating the assessment results and allow better decision-analysis through illustration of different system attributes and trade-offs between different alternatives. The proposed methodologies have been illustrated using end-use monitored data for whole year operation of a university campus energy system.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering 201
The Benefits to People of Expanding Marine Protected Areas
This study focuses on how the economic value of marine ecosystem services to people and communities is expected to change with the expansion of marine protected areas (MPAs). It is recognised, however, that instrumental economic value derived from ecosystem services is only one component of the overall value of the marine environment and that the intrinsic value of nature also provides an argument for the conservation of the marine habitats and biodiversity
Engineering Comes Home: Co-designing nexus infrastructure from the bottom-up
The ânexusâ between water, food and energy systems is well established. It is conventionally analysed as
a supply-side problem of infrastructure interdependencies, overlooking demand-side interactions and
opportunities. The home is one of the most significant sites of nexus interactions and opportunities for
redesigning technologies and infrastructure. New developments in âsmart cityâ technologies have the
potential to support a bottom-up approach to designing and managing nexus infrastructure. The
Engineering Comes Home was a research project that turned infrastructure design on its head. The
objectives of the project were to:
Demonstrate a new paradigm for engineering design starting from the viewpoint of the home,
looking out towards systems of provision to meet household demands.
Integrate thinking about water, energy, food, waste and data at the domestic scale to support userled
innovation and co-design of technologies and infrastructure.
Test new design methods that connect homes to communities, technologies and infrastructure,
enhancing positive interactions between data, water, energy, food and waste systems.
Develop a robust Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) Calculator tool to support environmental decisionmaking
in co-design.
Working with residents of the Meakin Estate in South London, the project followed a co-design method
to identify requirements, analyse options and develop and test a detailed design for a preferred option.
The outputs were:
1) Ethnographic study of how residents use water, energy and food resources in their homes and key
opportunities for engineering design to improve wellbeing and reduce resource consumption.
2) Co-design of decentralised infrastructural systems in three workshops in 2016-2017. The first
workshop identified key priorities for development from the community using a novel token-based
system design method, to enable participants to build up alternative designs for local provision of water,
energy, food and waste services. The second workshop provided participants with factsheets and
photographs of the candidate technologies, which were then analysed using a LCA Calculator tool.
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Rainwater harvesting was selected as the technology for further co-design in the third workshop, which
focussed on scaling up a pilot installation.
3) Pilot-scale smart rainwater system was installed in partnership with the Over The Air Analytics (OTA).
OTAâs system enables remote control of the rainwater storage tanks to optimise their performance as
stormwater attenuation as well as non-potable water supply.
4) Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) Calculator to enable quick estimation of the impacts of new systems and
technology to deliver water, energy and food, and manage waste at the household and neighbourhood
scale.
5) Stakeholders, including utilities, design consultancies and community based organisations, were
engaged in three workshops to inform the wider relevance and development of the co-design methods
and tools.
6) Toolbox and method statements to standardise and disseminate the methods used in the project for
wider application and development
Carbon Free Boston: Energy Technical Report
Part of a series of reports that includes:
Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Technical Summary;
Carbon Free Boston: Buildings Technical Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Transportation Technical Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Waste Technical Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Offsets Technical Report;
Available at http://sites.bu.edu/cfb/INTRODUCTION:
The adoption of clean energy in Bostonâs buildings and transportation systems will produce sweeping
changes in the quantity and composition of the cityâs demand for fuel and electricity. The demand for
electricity is expected to increase by 2050, while the demand for petroleum-based liquid fuels and
natural gas within the city is projected to decline significantly. The city must meet future energy demand
with clean energy sources in order to meet its carbon mitigation targets. That clean energy must be
procured in a way that supports the Cityâs goals for economic development, social equity, environmental
sustainability, and overall quality of life. This chapter examines the strategies to accomplish these goals.
Improved energy efficiency, district energy, and in-boundary generation of clean energy (rooftop PV)
will reduce net electric power and natural gas demand substantially, but these measures will not
eliminate the need for electricity and gas (or its replacement fuel) delivered into Boston. Broadly
speaking, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the city must therefore (1) reduce its use of fossil fuels
to heat and cool buildings through cost-effective energy efficiency measures and electrification of
building thermal services where feasible; and (2) over time, increase the amount of carbon-free
electricity delivered to the city. Reducing energy demand though cost effective energy conservation
measures will be necessary to reduce the challenges associated with expanding the electricity delivery
system and sustainably sourcing renewable fuels.Published versio
New Challenges towards Smart Systems' Efficiency by Digital Twin in Water Distribution Networks
[EN] Nowadays, in the management of water distribution networks (WDNs), particular attention is paid to digital transition and the improvement of the energy efficiency of these systems. New technologies have been developed in the recent years and their implementation can be crucial to achieve a sustainable level of water networks, namely, in water and energy losses. In particular, Digital Twins (DT) represents a very innovative technology, which relies on the integration of virtual network models, optimization algorithms, real time data collection, and smart actuators information with Geographic Information System (GIS) data. This research defines a new methodology for an efficient application of DT expertise within water distribution networks. Assuming a DMA of a real water distribution network as a case study, it was demonstrated that a fast detection of leakage along with an optimal setting of pressure control valves by means of DT together with an optimization procedure can ensure up to 28% of water savings, contributing to significantly increase the efficiency of the whole system.Ramos, HM.; Morani, MC.; Carraveta, A.; Fecarrotta, O.; Adeyeye, K.; López Jiménez, PA.; Pérez-Sånchez, M. (2022). New Challenges towards Smart Systems' Efficiency by Digital Twin in Water Distribution Networks. Water. 14(8):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/w1408130411714
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