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Critical Issues When Comparing Whole Building & Building Product Environmental Performance
(2016-10-17)
Guides, standards, product category rules, and environmental product declarations have emerged to evaluate environmental impacts within the buildings sector. These efforts have certainly moved the field forward, but as of ...
Research Brief: Concrete building design optimization for reduced life cycle costs and environmental impacts
(2018-04)
Decisions made at early stages of the building design process can have a large influence on the environmental performance and financial costs of a building. One of the best ways to discover preferable designs is to analyze ...
Research Brief: Meeting Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets in the Building Sector
(2019-07)
As the threat of climate change grows, lowering the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of high emitting sectors of the economy has become critical. The buildings sector is particularly significant, consuming up to 40% of total ...
Methods, Impacts, and Opportunities in the Concrete Building Life Cycle
(MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, 2011-08)
Life cycle assessment (LCA) offers a comprehensive approach to evaluating and improving the environmental impacts of buildings. This research explores and advances three key areas relevant to the field of buildings LCA: ...
Life Cycle Assessment for Residential Buildings: A Literature Review and Gap Analysis (Revised)
(2016-10-12)
What is the environmental impact of a house throughout its lifetime? This report summarizes recent research on life cycle assessment of residential buildings in order to identify gaps in understanding as well as best ...
Research Brief: Quantifying the impact of pavement reflectivity on radiative forcing and building energy demand in neighborhoods
(2017-03-13)
Albedo is the measure of the fraction of solar energy reflected by the Earth’s surface. High-albedo surfaces, which are lighter in color, absorb less sunlight energy and reflect more shortwave radiation. The change in ...
Research Brief: Optimizing Building Life Cycle Environmental Impact and Cost
(2020-02)
Existing building life cycle assessment tools rely on detailed building models that make it difficult to explore the environmental implications of design strategies in the earliest design phases. Most of these tools are ...
Air leakage has strong influence on building life cycle impacts
(2017-05-02)
Making informed decisions at the earliest stages of the design process can lead to improved building performance. There are many aspects of a building’s design that can influence overall energy consumption. This research ...
The impact of surface albedo on climate and building energy consumption: review and comparative analysis
(Transportation Review Board, 2015-08)
This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of the existing research on the climate impacts of albedo. Different analytical approaches and modeling works are synthesized and discussed.
Research Brief: Prioritizing Resilient Retrofits
(2018-02)
2017 was one of the most devastating U.S. hurricane seasons ever recorded. State Departments of Public Safety across the country list tens of thousands of destroyed homes and hundreds of thousands more damaged. Although ...