Delivering sustainability in office building refurbishment

The effect of climate change and global warming continues to receive attention with many governments and organisations acknowledging the long-term problems associated with the trend, although offering limited realistic solutions. Office buildings have been identified as a contributor to global warming during the construction phase, however during the building lifecycle there is a greater contribution to CO2 omissions. Whilst various building designs and construction techniques have evolved to improve energy efficiency, the focus has largely been placed on new buildings where it is easier to incorporate change and innovative approaches. However, the proportion of new buildings constructed each year is relatively small in comparison to existing building stock, which requires regular capital expenditure to maintain and attract new tenants within a competitive marketplace. Overall the degree to which capital expenditure for an existing building actually includes energy efficiency is difficult to measure, although appears to lag substantially behind sustainable building techniques for a new building.This study investigates the degree to which energy efficiency is incorporated into office building refurbishment and capital expenditure, with the emphasis placed on a cost-benefit analysis from both the owner&rsquo;s and tenant&rsquo;s perspective. Whilst it may be argued that a newly constructed energy efficient office building may be cost prohibitive, various steps may be taken to upgrade the energy efficiency of an existing building. This project identifies differences between varying levels of capital expenditure to ensure an existing building is more energy efficient, with the emphasis placed on (a) the cost of implementation and (b) the potential for tenants to acknowledge the increased energy efficiency via higher rents. In order to develop a research framework, a thorough literature review was conducted of three disciplines being construction technology, building refurbishment and property management.<br /

Office buildings and the environment : the increasing importance of ESD

The links between the built environment and sustainability issues such as fossil fuel consumption and climate change is clear. In developed countries buildings contribute around half of all carbon dioxide emissions and offer considerable scope for a significant contribution to sustainability through ecologically aware design and increased energy efficiency (BRE, 1996). The Australian commercial stock emits 12% of all greenhouse gas emissions however the commercial property market has some inherent barriers to sustainability (DSE, 2005). A substantial proportion of the stock is owned by institutional investors who are unconvinced by the need to improve their stock and pass on running costs to tenants (Callender &amp; Key, 1997). As capital values are not greatly affected by sustainability, owners react by doing little or nothing and the effect is to limit sustainability related investment and undermine efforts to deliver sustainability in the sector.Furthermore the efficiency of buildings declines over time and whilst energy efficiency is important to new design, the existing stock must be improved if urban built environment greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced. Much of the property and surveying research has previously adopted an illustrative case study approach advocating the benefits of ESD and energy efficiency in existing buildings. This research adopts a radically different approach and profiles the entire office stock of a global CBD, namely Melbourne, which is seeking to become a carbon neutral city by 2020. The research also employs scenario forecasting to model future changes to the stock over a fifteen year period. This paper sets out the rationale for the research and establishes the methodological approach adopted by the research team.<br /

Office building characteristics and the links with carbon emissions

Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to present research which analysed energy consumption in the Melbourne central business district (CBD) office stock and examined all buildings to identify CO2 emissions in 2005. The rationale was that, by profiling a large group of buildings, it would be possible to identify characteristics of the stock. For example, do older buildings typically emit more CO2 per square metre than newer buildings?Design/methodology/approach &ndash; This research conducted a detailed analysis of all Melbourne CBD office stock to identify which patterns and trends emerged regarding building characteristics and carbon emissions. The study examined variables such as building size, number of employees, occupancy levels, physical characteristics and building age.Findings &ndash; By examining all office stock and aggregating data, the results confirm that it is possible to identify general physical building characteristics and carbon emissions. This research confirmed that clear relationships existed within the Melbourne CBD office stock in terms of building size, age and the density of occupation in relation to CO2 emissions.Originality/value &ndash; Practitioners can apply this knowledge to the professional advice they give to clients to assist in achieving increased energy efficiency in the office stock, for example in refurbishment being conscious that smaller buildings will be generally less energy-efficient than larger ones.<br /

The business case for incorporating sustainability in office buildings : the adaptive reuse of existing buildings

The effect of climate change and global warming has received increased attention in society with constant reminders about the importance of energy efficiency and sustainability in buildings. Whilst the focus is often placed on smaller items such as plastic bags, air conditioners and motor vehicles, the emphasis has recently shifted to structures in the built environment. Office buildings have been identified as contributing significantly to global warming during their building lifecycle with a substantial contribution to CO2 omissions. In response, building designs and construction techniques have evolved over time to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 omissions. Whilst property valuers, managers and analysts must remain up-to-date regarding changes, relatively little research has been conducted about whether and how increased sustainability, such as signified in a Green Star rating affects a property&rsquo;s highest and best value and long-term lifecycle. This study investigates the degree to which sustainability is understood in the property marketplace, especially in relation to property values with the emphasis placed on a cost- benefit analysis from both an owner&rsquo;s and tenant&rsquo;s perspective. Whilst it may be argued that incorporating sustainability into a new office building is cost prohibitive on a financial cost-benefit analysis, often various minor steps can be taken to upgrade the sustainability of an existing building. This project examines recent trends in capital expenditure to increase the sustainability of offices and where Green Star ratings have been applied to establish whether any corresponding increase in value is evident. In order to develop a researchframework, a thorough literature review will be conducted of recent Australian and overseas studies. This will enable links between sustainability and office buildings to be highlighted, and vitally how they affect a property&rsquo;s value in both the short and long-term.<br /

Scrubbing up: multi-scale investigation of woody encroachment in a southern African savannah

Changes in the extent of woody vegetation represent a major conservation question in many savannah systems around the globe. To address the problem of the current lack of broad-scale cost-effective tools for land cover monitoring in complex savannah environments, we use a multi-scale approach to quantifying vegetation change in Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa. We test whether medium spatial resolution satellite data (Landsat, existing back to the 1970s), which have pixel sizes larger than typical vegetation patches, can nevertheless capture the thematic detail required to detect woody encroachment in savannahs. We quantify vegetation change over a 13-year period in KNP, examine the changes that have occurred, assess the drivers of these changes, and compare appropriate remote sensing data sources for monitoring change. We generate land cover maps for three areas of southern KNP using very high resolution (VHR) and medium resolution satellite sensor imagery from February 2001 to 2014. Considerable land cover change has occurred, with large increases in shrubs replacing both trees and grassland. Examination of exclosure areas and potential environmental driver data suggests two mechanisms: elephant herbivory removing trees and at least one separate mechanism responsible for conversion of grassland to shrubs, theorised to be increasing atmospheric CO2. Thus, the combination of these mechanisms causes the novel two-directional shrub encroachment that we observe (tree loss and grassland conversion). Multi-scale comparison of classifications indicates that although spatial detail is lost when using medium resolution rather than VHR imagery for land cover classification (e.g., Landsat imagery cannot readily distinguish between tree and shrub classes, while VHR imagery can), the thematic detail contained within both VHR and medium resolution classifications is remarkably congruent. This suggests that medium resolution imagery contains sufficient thematic information for most broad-scale land cover monitoring requirements in heterogeneous savannahs, while having the benefits of being cost-free and providing a longer historical archive of data than VHR sources. We conclude that monitoring of broad-scale land cover change using remote sensing has considerable potential as a cost-effective tool for both better informing land management practitioners, and for monitoring the future landscape-scale impacts of management policies in savannahs

Income inequality and population health: a review and explanation of the evidence.

Abstract Whether or not the scale of a society&apos;s income inequality is a determinant of population health is still regarded as a controversial issue. We decided to review the evidence and see if we could find a consistent interpretation of both the positive and negative findings. We identified 168 analyses in 155 papers reporting research findings on the association between income distribution and population health, and classified them according to how far their findings supported the hypothesis that greater income differences are associated with lower standards of population health. Analyses in which all adjusted associations between greater income equality and higher standards of population health were statistically significant and positive were classified as &apos;&apos;wholly supportive&apos;&apos;; if none were significant and positive they were classified as &apos;&apos;unsupportive&apos;&apos;; and if some but not all were significant and supportive they were classified as &apos;&apos;partially supportive&apos;&apos;. Of those classified as either wholly supportive or unsupportive, a large majority (70 per cent) suggest that health is less good in societies where income differences are bigger. There were substantial differences in the proportion of supportive findings according to whether inequality was measured in large or small areas. We suggest that the studies of income inequality are more supportive in large areas because in that context income inequality serves as a measure of the scale of social stratification, or how hierarchical a society is. We suggest three explanations for the unsupportive findings reported by a minority of studies. First, many studies measured inequality in areas too small to reflect the scale of social class differences in a society; second, a number of studies controlled for factors which, rather than being genuine confounders, are likely either to mediate between class and health or to be other reflections of the scale of social stratification; and third, the international relationship was temporarily lost (in all but the youngest age groups) during the decade from the mid-1980s when income differences were widening particularly rapidly in a number of countries. We finish by discussing possible objections to our interpretation of the findings.

Human cytomegalovirus: taking the strain

In celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first isolation of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), we reflect on the merits and limitations of the viral strains currently being used to develop urgently needed treatments. HCMV research has been dependent for decades on the high-passage strains AD169 and Towne, heavily exploiting their capacity to replicate efficiently in fibroblasts. However, the genetic integrity of these strains is so severely compromised that great caution needs to be exercised when considering their past and future use. It is now evident that wild-type HCMV strains are not readily propagated in vitro. HCMV mutants are rapidly selected during isolation in fibroblasts, reproducibly affecting gene RL13, the UL128 locus (which includes genes UL128, UL130 and UL131A) and often the UL/b′ region. As a result, the virus becomes less cell associated, altered in tropism and less pathogenic. This problem is not restricted to high-passage strains, as even low-passage strains can harbour biologically significant mutations. Cloning and manipulation of the HCMV genome as a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) offers a means of working with stable, genetically defined strains. To this end, the low-passage strain Merlin genome was cloned as a BAC and sequentially repaired to match the viral sequence in the original clinical sample from which Merlin was derived. Restoration of UL128L to wild type was detrimental to growth in fibroblasts, whereas restoration of RL13 impaired growth in all cell types tested. Stable propagation of phenotypically wild-type virus could be achieved only by placing both regions under conditional expression. In addition to the development of these tools, the Merlin transcriptome and proteome have been characterized in unparalleled detail. Although Merlin may be representative of the clinical agent, high-throughput whole-genome deep sequencing studies have highlighted the remarkable high level of interstrain variation present in circulating virus. There is a need to develop systems capable of addressing the significance of this diversity, free from the confounding effects of genetic changes associated with in vitro adaptation. The generation of a set of BAC clones, each containing the genome of a different HCMV strain repaired to match the sequence in the clinical sample, would provide a pathway to address the biological and clinical effects of natural variation in wild-type HCMV

Observations of the infrared triplet of singly ionized calcium

Observations are presented of the Ca ii infrared triplet (8498 Å, 8542 Å, and 8662 Å) at three positions on the solar disk to make possible direct analyses of the lines and comparisons with theoretical computations. The source functions for the two strongest lines (8542 Å and 8662 Å) are equal at those heights corresponding to the wings of the lines (¦Δλ¦ > 0.4 Å) but not to those of the cores. We suggest that the apparent source function inequality in the cores is due to limb darkening caused by inhomogeneities in the chromosphere.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43706/1/11207_2004_Article_BF00153072.pd

Partnership, ownership and control: the impact of corporate governance on employment relations

Prevailing patterns of dispersed share ownership and rules of corporate governance for UK listed companies appear to constrain the ability of managers to make credible, long-term commitments to employees of the kind needed to foster effective labour-management partnerships. We present case study evidence which suggests that such partnerships can nevertheless emerge where product market conditions and the regulatory environment favour a stakeholder orientation. Proactive and mature partnerships may also be sustained where the board takes a strategic approach to mediating between the claims of different stakeholder groups, institutional investors are prepared to take a long-term view of their holdings, and strong and independent trade unions are in a position to facilitate organisational change