Browsing Reports and Research Briefs by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 42
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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 ... -
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 ... -
The decision-making process in the design of residential structures
(MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, 2015-03)Building codes and standards have been key drivers in shifting industry towards more energy efficiency, but it is important to take a more holistic approach toward GHG mitigation and evaluate the impact of design decisions ... -
The Effects of Inflation and Its Volatility on the Choice of Construction Alternatives
(MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, 2011-08)Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is the standard method for costing long-lived construction projects. The LCCA process determines the full costs of mutually exclusive construction options, finding the project design with ... -
How to Improve Pavement Life Cycle Cost Analysis: A Case Study of Minnesota
(2017-06-26)Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) frameworks are used by some transportation agencies for economic assessment, but there have been challenges implementing the approach, particularly in the characterization of initial and ... -
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. -
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 ... -
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: ... -
Methods, Impacts, and Opportunities in the Concrete Pavement Life Cycle
(MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, 2011-08)Life cycle assessment (LCA) offers a comprehensive approach to evaluate and improve the environmental impacts of pavements. This research explores and advances three key areas relevant to the pavement LCA field: methodology, ... -
Research Brief: A break-even hazard mitigation metric
(2017-01-12)CSHub researchers developed the Break Even Mitigation Percent (BEMP) to answer the question: “How much should be invested in mitigation for a particular building?” -
Research Brief: A Reaction-Diffusion Model to Determine Mesoscale Patterns in Cement Paste
(2018-08)Strength and toughness, two important aspects of the durability of concrete structures, are dramatically influenced by the material’s nanotexture, but the question of how the building blocks of cement paste organize ... -
Research Brief: A Resilience Assessment of Structures Using Molecular Dynamics
(2018-06)Between 1993-ˇ2012, more than 75% of catastrophic losses in the United States were caused by windstorms (1). The Congressional Budget Office estimated an average annual damage amounting to $28 billion (0.16 percent of GDP), ... -
Research Brief: Assessing Road Quality Using Crowdsourced Smartphone Measurements
(2020-07)As the demands on the nation’s roads increase, so too have road maintenance costs. To meet these challenges, agencies must vigilantly monitor road surface quality to properly apportion resources. Traditional methods of ... -
Research Brief: Can Passive House and Zero-energy Building Standards Promise a Low-carbon Future?
(2020-05)Passive house (PH) and zero-energy building (ZEB) standards aim to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprints of buildings. The PH concept implies a low energy consumption achieved through passive technology such ... -
Research Brief: Capillary Stress During Cement Drying Shrinkage
(2018-06)Imagine a household sponge lying next to a kitchen sink. The sponge looks and feels different when it is wet versus when it is dry. When a sponge dries, it shrinks, curls and hardens due to suction forces (called “capillary ... -
Research Brief: Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Pavement Albedo
(2018-01)Albedo is the measure of how much solar energy is reflected by the Earth’s surface. Lighter color, or high-albedo, surfaces absorb less sunlight energy and reflect more shortwave radiation. Increasing pavement albedo has ... -
Research Brief: Community-Informed Building-Scale Resilience Assessment
(2020-02)It is widely known that natural hazards, like hurricanes, cause tremendous levels of damage and that hazard mitigation can significantly curb natural hazard-induced losses. However, necessary investments are still needed ... -
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: Creating Customized Fragility Curves for Resilient Building
(2018-11)Fragility curves, which are a statistical tool that represent the probability of exceeding a certain level of structural damage due to various forces applied to a building, are used to assess anticipated building performance. ... -
Research Brief: Evolving the C-S-H Packing Density at the Microscale
(2017-10-02)Cement paste is a complex multiphase material, roughly 50 percent of which, by volume, is composed of calcium-silicate-hydrates (C-S-H). The C-S-H phase, which lends the material its rigidity, appears to be a dispersion ...
