Carbon dioxide reduction in the building life cycle: a critical review

The construction industry is known to be a major contributor to environmental pressures due to its high energy consumption and carbon dioxide generation. The growing amount of carbon dioxide emissions over buildings’ life cycles has prompted academics and professionals to initiate various studies relating to this problem. Researchers have been exploring carbon dioxide reduction methods for each phase of the building life cycle – from planning and design, materials production, materials distribution and construction process, maintenance and renovation, deconstruction and disposal, to the material reuse and recycle phase. This paper aims to present the state of the art in carbon dioxide reduction studies relating to the construction industry. Studies of carbon dioxide reduction throughout the building life cycle are reviewed and discussed, including those relating to green building design, innovative low carbon dioxide materials, green construction methods, energy efficiency schemes, life cycle energy analysis, construction waste management, reuse and recycling of materials and the cradle-to-cradle concept. The review provides building practitioners and researchers with a better understanding of carbon dioxide reduction potential and approaches worldwide. Opportunities for carbon dioxide reduction can thereby be maximised over the building life cycle by creating environmentally benign designs and using low carbon dioxide materials

The stigmatisation of social housing: findings from a panel investigation

“Copyright 2011 AHURI Limited. Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.” This is the publisher's copryight version of this article, the original can be found at: http://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/166This report presents the findings from a panel investigation established to consider the impact of stigma for social housing residents and the policies that can be deployed to mitigate its effects. The panel team included experts in public policy, housing and the media. The team met on three occasions in the latter part of 2010. While the panel deliberated on issues that traversed theory and practice, a substantive amount of time was set aside to explore the role of the media as a contributor to reinforcing stigma, and the ways that social housing organisations can promote more positive media reporting

The stigmatisation of public housing: findings from a panel investigation

This Investigative Panel found that social housing neighbourhoods are stigmatised because government policies have worked to congregate socially disadvantaged people in social housing neighbourhoods while under-investing in the tenure. At the same time, the media has portrayed these neighbourhoods as a haven for criminals and the welfare dependent. The authors argue that social housing organisations need to better employ the media to highlight the good effects of social housing, and educate the public about inequities in the housing system

The TIGRIsat camera. A nanosatellite optical payload for detecting dust and sand storms.

TIGRIsat is the first Iraqi satellite. It has been launched on June 19th 2014, becoming the first Iraqi satellite. The small spacecraft is a 3 Unit CubeSat nanosatellite, weighting under 4 kg and carrying a camera for monitoring dust and sand storms over Iraq. TIGRIsat has been built by Iraqi post-graduate students within a bilateral Italian-Iraqi collaboration. The payload of the satellite has been designed to target an area covering all the surface of Iraq, and producing images which will be transmitted to the ground stations and processed to identify sand and dust storms occurring in that area