This report attempts to understand the effects of the many aspects that pertain to a woman’s path into the construction industry and their role in limiting women’s overall representation in the construction industry. More specifically, it aims to understand how upbringing, background, and culture impact women that do pursue careers in the construction industry. This paper presents some of the current and prominent issues being faced by women in in the construction industry, including those in the trades. These issues then contribute to their lack of representation and forceful exit. Additionally, it assesses personal narratives from a localized group of women who are currently employed at a large construction company. This information and these narratives are analyzed jointly to try and gain a better understanding of the current challenges being faced by women in comparison to those reported previously. This joint comparison allows for a deeper understanding of women’s perception of the construction industry as a whole.
Maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the United States continues to rise, with a wide range of contributing factors such as mental illness, cardiovascular disease and systemic inequality. This metastudy provides a holistic view of the research that has been published on the issue of U.S. maternal healthcare from 2000-2022. The patterns of publications on specific topics over time can tell us what is perceived as a current major cause by physicians, public leaders, researchers, and the public. A deeper dive into systemic inequality as a cause of maternal morbidity and mortality highlights it as a major contributor to these high rates, but that progress is slowly being made through the implementation of detection and prevention tactics, as well as accessible prenatal programs and care.
New quantitative sustainability indices are proposed to capture the energy system environmental impacts, economic performance, and resilience attributes, characterized by normalized environmental/health externalities, energy costs, and penalty costs respectively. A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment is proposed which includes externalities due to emissions from different supply and demand-side energy systems specific to the regional power generation energy portfolio mix. An approach based on external costs, i.e. the monetized health and environmental impacts, was used to quantify adverse consequences associated with different energy system components.
Further, this thesis also proposes a new performance-based method for characterizing and assessing resilience of multi-functional demand-side engineered systems. Through modeling of system response to potential internal and external failures during different operational temporal periods reflective of diurnal variation in loads and services, the proposed methodology quantifies resilience of the system based on imposed penalty costs to the system stakeholders due to undelivered or interrupted services and/or non-optimal system performance.
A conceptual diagram called “Sustainability Compass” is also proposed which facilitates communicating the assessment results and allow better decision-analysis through illustration of different system attributes and trade-offs between different alternatives. The proposed methodologies have been illustrated using end-use monitored data for whole year operation of a university campus energy system.
To improve performance, some systems dehumidify the air before cooling. One common dehumidifier is the desiccant wheel, in which solid desiccant absorbs moisture out of the air while rotating through circular housing. This system improves performance, especially when the desiccant is regenerated with waste or solar heat; however, the heat of regeneration is very large, as the water absorbed during dehumidification must be evaporated. N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAAm), a sorbent that oozes water when raised above a certain temperature, could potentially replace traditional desiccants in dehumidifiers. The heat of regeneration for NIPAAm consists of some sensible heat to bring the sorbent to the regeneration temperature, plus some latent heat to offset any liquid water that is evaporated as it is exuded from the NIPAAm. This means the NIPAAm regeneration heat has the potential to be much lower than that of a traditional desiccant.
Models were created for a standard vapor compression air conditioning system, two desiccant systems, and two theoretical NIPAAm systems. All components were modeled for simplified steady state operation. For a moderate percent of water evaporated during regeneration, it was found that the NIPAAm systems perform better than standard vapor compression. When compared to the desiccant systems, the NIPAAm systems performed better at almost all percent evaporation values. The regeneration heat was modeled as if supplied by an electric heater. If a cheaper heat source were utilized, the case for NIPAAm would be even stronger.
Future work on NIPAAm dehumidification should focus on lowering the percent evaporation from the 67% value found in literature. Additionally, the NIPAAm cannot exceed the lower critical solution temperature during dehumidification, indicating that a NIPAAm dehumidification system should be carefully designed such that the sorbent temperature is kept sufficiently low during dehumidification.
Two main strategies have emerged for integrating sustainability grand challenges. In the stand-alone course method, engineering programs establish one or two distinct courses that address sustainability grand challenges in depth. In the module method, engineering programs integrate sustainability grand challenges throughout existing courses. Neither method has been assessed in the literature.
This thesis aimed to develop sustainability modules, to create methods for evaluating the modules’ effectiveness on student cognitive and affective outcomes, to create methods for evaluating students’ cumulative sustainability knowledge, and to evaluate the stand-alone course method to integrate sustainability grand challenges into engineering curricula via active and experiential learning.
The Sustainable Metrics Module for teaching sustainability concepts and engaging and motivating diverse sets of students revealed that the activity portion of the module had the greatest impact on learning outcome retention.
The Game Design Module addressed methods for assessing student mastery of course content with student-developed games indicated that using board game design improved student performance and increased student satisfaction.
Evaluation of senior design capstone projects via novel comprehensive rubric to assess sustainability learned over students’ curriculum revealed that students’ performance is primarily driven by their instructor’s expectations. The rubric provided a universal tool for assessing students’ sustainability knowledge and could also be applied to sustainability-focused projects.
With this in mind, engineering educators should pursue modules that connect sustainability grand challenges to engineering concepts, because student performance improves and students report higher satisfaction. Instructors should utilize pedagogies that engage diverse students and impact concept retention, such as active and experiential learning. When evaluating the impact of sustainability in the curriculum, innovative assessment methods should be employed to understand student mastery and application of course concepts and the impacts that topics and experiences have on student satisfaction.
This thesis attempts to achieve the research objectives by examining the LEED certified buildings on the Arizona State University (ASU) campus in Tempe, AZ, from two complementary perspectives: the Macro-level and the Micro-level. Heating, cooling, and electricity data were collected from the LEED-certified buildings on campus, and their energy use intensity was calculated in order to investigate the buildings' actual energy performance. Additionally, IEQ occupant satisfaction surveys were used to investigate users' satisfaction with the space layout, space furniture, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting level, acoustic quality, water efficiency, cleanliness and maintenance of the facilities they occupy.
From a Macro-level perspective, the results suggest ASU LEED buildings consume less energy than regional counterparts, and exhibit higher occupant satisfaction than national counterparts. The occupant satisfaction results are in line with the literature on LEED buildings, whereas the energy results contribute to the inconclusive body of knowledge on energy performance improvements linked to LEED certification. From a Micro-level perspective, data analysis suggest an inconsistency between the LEED points earned for the Energy & Atmosphere and IEQ categories, on one hand, and the respective levels of energy consumption and occupant satisfaction on the other hand. Accordingly, this study showcases the variation in the performance results when approached from different perspectives. This contribution highlights the need to consider the Macro-level and Micro-level assessments in tandem, and assess LEED building performance from these two distinct but complementary perspectives in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the actual building performance.
This research, sponsored by National Academy of Construction, the Construction Industry Institute and Arizona State University, used structured interviews, a Delphi study and focus groups to explore: 1) potential benefit and industry interest in an open repository of best practices and 2) important elements of a framework/model that guides the creation, management and sustainment of an open repository of best practices.
This dissertation presents findings specifically exploring the term "Practices for Excellence", its definition, elements that hinder implementation, the potential value of an open online repository for such practices and a model to develop an open repository.