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ContributorsWard, Geoffrey Harris (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-18
ContributorsWasbotten, Leia (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-30
Description
Natural resource depletion and environmental degradation are the stark realities of the times we live in. As awareness about these issues increases globally, industries and businesses are becoming interested in understanding and minimizing the ecological footprints of their activities. Evaluating the environmental impacts of products and processes has become a key issue, and the first step towards addressing and eventually curbing climate change. Additionally, companies are finding it beneficial and are interested in going beyond compliance using pollution prevention strategies and environmental management systems to improve their environmental performance. Life-cycle Assessment (LCA) is an evaluative method to assess the environmental impacts associated with a products' life-cycle from cradle-to-grave (i.e. from raw material extraction through to material processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and finally, disposal or recycling). This study focuses on evaluating building envelopes on the basis of their life-cycle analysis. In order to facilitate this analysis, a small-scale office building, the University Services Building (USB), with a built-up area of 148,101 ft2 situated on ASU campus in Tempe, Arizona was studied. The building's exterior envelope is the highlight of this study. The current exterior envelope is made of tilt-up concrete construction, a type of construction in which the concrete elements are constructed horizontally and tilted up, after they are cured, using cranes and are braced until other structural elements are secured. This building envelope is compared to five other building envelope systems (i.e. concrete block, insulated concrete form, cast-in-place concrete, steel studs and curtain wall constructions) evaluating them on the basis of least environmental impact. The research methodology involved developing energy models, simulating them and generating changes in energy consumption due to the above mentioned envelope types. Energy consumption data, along with various other details, such as building floor area, areas of walls, columns, beams etc. and their material types were imported into Life-Cycle Assessment software called ATHENA impact estimator for buildings. Using this four-stepped LCA methodology, the results showed that the Steel Stud envelope performed the best and less environmental impact compared to other envelope types. This research methodology can be applied to other building typologies.
ContributorsRamachandran, Sriranjani (Author) / Bryan, Harvey (Thesis advisor) / Reddy T, Agami (Committee member) / White, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
ContributorsPonce, Angelita (Performer) / Rowland, Travis (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-30
ContributorsZelenak, Kristen (Performer) / Detweiler, Samuel (Performer) / Rollefson, Justin (Performer) / Hong, Dylan (Performer) / Salazar, Nathan (Performer) / Feher, Patrick (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-31
ContributorsRyall, Blake (Performer) / Olarte, Aida (Performer) / Senseman, Stephen (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-30
Description
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) quantifies environmental impacts of products in raw material extraction, processing, manufacturing, distribution, use and final disposal. The findings of an LCA can be used to improve industry practices, to aid in product development, and guide public policy. Unfortunately, existing approaches to LCA are unreliable in the cases of emerging technologies, where data is unavailable and rapid technological advances outstrip environmental knowledge. Previous studies have demonstrated several shortcomings to existing practices, including the masking of environmental impacts, the difficulty of selecting appropriate weight sets for multi-stakeholder problems, and difficulties in exploration of variability and uncertainty. In particular, there is an acute need for decision-driven interpretation methods that can guide decision makers towards making balanced, environmentally sound decisions in instances of high uncertainty. We propose the first major methodological innovation in LCA since early establishment of LCA as the analytical perspective of choice in problems of environmental management. We propose to couple stochastic multi-criteria decision analytic tools with existing approaches to inventory building and characterization to create a robust approach to comparative technology assessment in the context of high uncertainty, rapid technological change, and evolving stakeholder values. Namely, this study introduces a novel method known as Stochastic Multi-attribute Analysis for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (SMAA-LCIA) that uses internal normalization by means of outranking and exploration of feasible weight spaces.
ContributorsPrado, Valentina (Author) / Seager, Thomas P (Thesis advisor) / Landis, Amy E. (Committee member) / Chester, Mikhail (Committee member) / White, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
ContributorsUhrenbacher, Tina (Performer) / Creviston, Hannah (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-31
ContributorsYi, Joyce (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-22
ContributorsDaval, Charles (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-26