<p>This paper intends to offer insights into the internationally recognized LEED Green Building Rating System by taking a closer look at the short-­ and long-­term upsides and downsides of the system in a Finnish construction project, case Lintulahti. This qualitative research has been based on a research model and the primary data has been collected by conducting interviews with industry professionals involved in the project. A great deal of academic literature claims that the benefits of green building exceed its costs. The empirical findings in this paper imply that this claim is valid even for the case study and that LEED can be applied in a Finnish project. However, several challenges related to the implementation exist.</p>

This paper intends to offer insights into the internationally recognized LEED Green Building Rating System by taking a closer look at the short-­ and long-­term upsides and downsides of the system in a Finnish construction project, case Lintulahti. This qualitative research has been based on a research model and the primary data has been collected by conducting interviews with industry professionals involved in the project. A great deal of academic literature claims that the benefits of green building exceed its costs. The empirical findings in this paper imply that this claim is valid even for the case study and that LEED can be applied in a Finnish project. However, several challenges related to the implementation exist.

This thesis is an exploration of how to do sustainable development for buildings, especially during the earliest stages of such development. The thesis starts by considering clear definitions of sustainability, development and sustainable development as these concepts apply to organizations in general and as they apply specifically to the charity All Our Relations (AOR) and their community of the Region of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Three critical challenges to the process of development are also discussed in these early chapters, namely assessment, vision and feedback. In the third chapter, these same challenges are put under the lens of sustainable development and three new, but related, challenges of connection complexity, shared futures and resilience are examined to better understand the problems and solutions that surround them. At the end of this broad introductory section, AOR’s relationships with the community are explored as part of their efforts to draft an organization-wide sustainability plan. The second part of the thesis is an attempt to apply and expand on the general ideas from the first half through a focus on buildings and specifically the building of AOR’s planned Hospice and Retreat Centre in Bloomingdale, Ontario. As part of the focus on sustainable buildings, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) system of assessing building impacts is presented and critiqued. As part of a focus on building developments the earlier challenges of assessment, vision and feedback are revisited as they apply to the concept design phase of the typical building design. The final three chapters of the thesis are a synthesis of all the previous chapters and the formal presentation of the case study concept development for the AOR building. A full summary of all previous definitions are presented and the final definition of sustainable building development is expressed as a culmination and extension of its parts: Sustainable building development is a process of creating space-for-use which recognizes both the importance of space in our lives and the impact that developing that space has on our greater goal to pursue sustainability. Potential critiques of this definition are discussed and two methods of engaging in the difficult challenges of sustainable building development are presented: the decider’s dilemma and the life-cycle-service-network model of connection complexity. Finally, the case study use of LEED as a guide for doing sustainable development in buildings is contrasted against the author’s proposed approaches. Through a series of qualitative and quantitative observations based on the results from the case study design, LEED is revealed as being effective mostly as an early guide, but lacking in the rigor and complexity needed to address properly the challenges of building sustainability.

Ultrathin graphite films, with thickness from 1-30 atomic layers, are grown on the Si-terminated and C-terminated faces of 6H-SiC and 4H-SiC via thermal desorption of silicon in an ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) chamber or in a high-vacuum RF furnace. Graphite LEED patterns and atom-resolved STM images on graphite films prove that epitaxial growth is achieved on both faces of the SiC substrate. The thickness of graphite films is estimated with modeling the Si:C Auger peak intensities. Through LEED and STM investigations of monolayer graphite grown on the Si-face of SiC(0001) surface, we show the existence of a SiC 6R3*6R3 reconstructed layer between graphite films and the SiC substrate. The complicated LEED patterns can be interpreted partially by the kinematic scattering of the interfacial layer and the 6*6 surface corrugation. Further scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) measurements indicate that the graphite films remain continuous over the steps between domains. Carbon nanotubes and carbon nanocaps cover about 40% of the graphitized C-face of SiC. The remaining areas are flat graphite films. Graphite ribbons were made through E-beam lithography. After the lithography process, the graphitic features remain on flat region underneath HSQ residues.

Gold¡¦s reputation as an inactive catalyst has been changed since the discoveries made by pioneers, including Bond, Hutchings, and Haruta. Today, exploring gold¡¦s potential to catalyze a range of heterogeneous and homogeneous reactions has been a hot topic. In this dissertation, reaction of CO and hydroxyl groups and cyclotrimerization of propanal (C2H5CHO) catalyzed by gold were studied by using temperature-programmed desorption (TPD), reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (RAIRS), X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. keywords: LEED, XPS, RAIRS,TPD, Gold, cyclotrimerization, propanal, CO oxidation In the first topic, CO oxidation by hydroxyl groups prepared by electron beam bombardment of physisorbed water was performed on Au(110) and Au(531). The formation of hydroxyl groups was evidenced by the observation of the desorption of D2O at 175 K and D2 at 230 K in TPD, in conjunction with the O 1s peak at 531.32 eV in XPS. The adsorption of CO on the hydroxyl-covered surface resulted in CO2 desorption at 110 K and 150 K on Au(110), and 105 K, 140 K and 180 K on Au(531). In the investigation of various D2O and CO coverages, the adsorption of CO and D2O was found to be preferred on low-coordinated Au atoms. Additionally, D2O on low-coordinated Au atoms required lower dissociation energy. This site effect was correlated with the high activity of smaller gold nanoparticles. Moreover, the mechanism for reaction of CO and hydroxyl groups was suggested to be similar to the water-gas-shift reaction due to the observation of the enhancement of D2 desorption after reaction. The second topic studied the cyclotrimerization of propanal catalyzed by gold. After exposing Au(110) to propanal at 180 K, the desorption of 2,4,6-triethyl-1,3,5-trioxane ((C2H5CHO)3) was observed at 340 K. The RAIRS and XPS studies showed that the cyclotrimerization of propanal was completed at 180 K. The same results were also detected on Au(531). However, only propanal molecular desorption was found on Au(111) suggesting that the low coordination Au atoms and the trench-like structure on Au(110) and Au(531) play key roles. On Ag(110) and Cu(110), no reaction was found indicating that the intrinsic nature of gold is also an important factor for the reaction. Investigation on Pt(110) inherited with the same (1x2) missing-row structure revealed that the decarbonylation of propanal occurred due to the stronger £b2(C,O) bonding mode. The reactions observed on Au(110), Au(531), and Pt(110) strongly suggest that the activity for the reactions may result from the relativistic effect of gold. The DFT calculations further showed the interactions between hydrogen in carbonyl groups and low-coordinated Au atoms (O=C-H¡KAu) help to gather propanal molecules and preorganize them at specific surface sites while an intracomplex reaction takes place.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System provides third-party verification for environmentally sustainable construction. LEED certified buildings often provide healthier work and living environments, however, it does not provide any direct economic incentives to the owners and developers. An early research suggested that there was a significant correlation between appraised unit value of a parcel and LEED sustainable site criteria for public transportation access. Moreover, the regression model for predicting appraised unit value of a parcel suggested that the coefficient of Number of Light Rail Stations was positive, while the coefficient of Number of Bus Stops was negative. This result contradicted our original expectation that both number of bus stops and light rail stations could have a positive effect on the appraised unit value. Hence it becomes important to conduct further research to explain this phenomenon. In this research, Pearson correlation was examined to determine whether there is a significant correlation between median household income and the number of bus stops and light rail stations for a given parcel that meet LEED sustainable site criteria for public transportation access. After confirming no significant correlation exists, multiple regression analysis was applied to establish a regression model for predicting unit value of a given parcel using number of bus stops and light rail stations for a given parcel that meet LEED sustainable site criteria for public transportation access, median household income and parcel area as the independent variables. Result of Pearson correlation indicated that there was no significant correlation exists between median household income and the number of bus stops and light rail stations for a given parcel which met LEED sustainable site criteria for public transportation access. Findings of multiple regression analysis suggested that all independent variables were significant predictors for unit value of a parcel. Besides, this regression model had a higher adjusted R- square value than that of the model which was established by Bhagyashri Joshi. It means that this regression model could better predict appraised unit value of an unimproved parcel.

When working on United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design LEED projects, architects, designers, and engineers involved in a sustainable design project often require information and tools beyond energy simulation software. They may require resources (tools) to support their decisions and to assess the risk involved in decision making. This research has presented a framework that links building performance assessment tools with the LEED rating system. It aims at bridging a gap between Architects, engineers, contractors, facility managers and LEED professionals. This work provides information about performance tools that can be used for different phases during design, construction and operation of a LEED rated building. A simple logic of the transitive property of equality i.e. if a = b, b = c then a = c was used to link the LEED credits requiring decision support with the tools that have capabilities to achieve it. This research presents a 3-dimensional matrix of "Right tool for right job at right time" by linking LEED credits, software tools and phases of building design, construction and operation. Overall the findings of the research demonstrated that the framework developed can be used for achieving 21 percent of total possible LEED 3.0 credits by providing about 36 percent of total possible points.

The primary objectives of this research are to identify the relation between Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria regarding sustainable site credits and the appraised value of land parcels in the City of Houston, and additionally to analyze the effects of detail components which leverage the sustainable credits regarding the Public Transportation Access (PTA) in terms of economic issues. To accomplish these objectives, the approach to estimate sustainable ratings of specific parcels using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was established. Green construction must be one of the most powerful trends in the construction industry. One of the main concepts to underlie the basis of this green construction is sustainability. This sustainability has to be considered in the process of the site selection prior to the actual activities to construct a building. Recently, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has suggested the modified guideline with "LEED 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations". According to this metric, it is clear that this principle endeavors to block environmental abuses related to land development or restoration projects. On the other hand, it is not easy to check the serviceability of these rules to guarantee continuous economic merit through sustainable land development or restoration encouraged by these criteria. The criteria regarding the sustainable site selection in this LEED metric are Sustainable Site Credit (SSC) #1: Site Selection, SSC #3: Brownfield, and SSC #4.1: Public Transportation Access. Linear regression methods were used for predictive analysis. In this model, the unit appraisal value of the land was used as the dependent variable to reflect the economic values of the land, and LEED-sustainable-site criteria were used as the categorical independent variables. According to statistical results, the models to predict the appraisal parcel value using sustainable site components have relatively low R-square. Moreover, SSC #1 and SSC #3 were not significant factors affecting the unit value of land. This outcome means that there are no statistically significant effects of SSC #1 and SSC #3 on parcel value. On the other hand, SSC #4.1 was highly significant. Furthermore, the detail components of SSC #4.1 regarding the bus stops and railroad stations were also significant. These results can lead to improved environmental preservation by avoiding development which is far from the PTA as well as increasing economic value while enhancing the development density near the PTA corridors. Finally, GIS was used to determine the LEED ratings of individual parcels. The methods established to do this can be applied to other projects for the other regions, or the same region at different times.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is one of the environmental assessment tools available to gauge buildings. This rating system is a voluntary system which does not include financial aspects in the evaluation framework. This poses a challenge for encouraging land development projects, since developers consider financial or economic return as a crucial factor before building a project. It becomes essential to know if market really accepts the economic worth of LEED ratings. This research attempted to find out relationship between economic worth of a land and parameters (measurements), which are essential to earn LEED sustainable rating for public transportation access. To find out this relationship and to recognize power of the LEED measurements to predict the appraised value of a land (dollars per square foot) various statistical models were used and predictive equations produced. The observational units were properties in Harris County, Texas that were unimproved and had zero improvement value. The dependent variable was unit value of the property measured in dollars per square foot. The independent variables were measurements that are required for a parcel to earn LEED sustainable site rating for public transportation access and the area of parcel. Data regarding appraised values and land area were acquired from the Harris County Appraisal District and transportation data was obtained from Houston- Galveston Area Council. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze different models and to develop predictive equations. Findings suggest that LEED green building rating system influences the appraised value, dollars per square foot, of properties. It further implies that market considers the economic effect of the LEED rating system even if this assessment method does not explicitly include financial aspects in the evaluation framework. Findings of this research also suggest that a sustainable feature of a site is related to the economic worth of a related land development project. This will provide encouragement for new sustainable land development projects. This will provide an economic incentive to the owners and developers. Developers will get encouragement to select a site located closer to mass transit networks.

Die Arbeit befasst sich mit dem Wachstum dünner CrSi2-Schichten auf Si(001). Die Schichtherstellung wurde mittels eines template-Verfahrens in einer MBE-Anlage realisiert. Die Charakterisierung der Schichten erfolgte mittels RBS,AES,LEED,REM,TEM,XRD sowie Widerstandsmessungen.