Global warming induced by the emissions of greenhouse gases is one of the most important global environmental issues facing the world today. Using the building simulation techniques, this research investigates the interaction and relationship between global warming and built environment, particularly for the air-conditioned office buildings. The adaptation potential of various building designs is also evaluated. Based on the descriptive statistics method, the Pearson Product Moment Correlation and the regression analysis method, ten years of historical hourly climatic data for Australia are first analyzed. The distribution patterns of key weather parameters between a Test Reference Year (TRY) and multiple years (MYs), and between relatively cold and hot years are also compared. The possible cross-correlation between several different weather variables are then assessed and established. These findings form a useful basis and provide insights for the development of future weather models under "hot" global warming conditions and the explanation of building performance at different locations. Based on a review of the existing weather data generation models and findings from historic climatic data analysis, an effective method to generate approximate future hourly weather data suitable for the study of the impact of global warming is presented. This is achieved by imposing the future temperature projection from the global climate model on top of the historically observed weather data. Depending on the level of information available for the prediction of future weather conditions, this method allows either the method of retaining to current level, constant offset method or diurnal modelling method to be used. Therefore it represents a more comprehensive and holistic approach than previous one that have been used to convert the available weather data and climatic information to a format suitable for building simulation study. An example of the application of this method to the different global warming scenarios in Australia is also presented. The performance of a representative office building is then examined in details under the five weather scenarios (present, 2030 Low, 2030 High, 2070 Low and 2070 High) and over all eight capital cities in Australia. The sample building used for this study is an air conditioned, square shape, ten storey office tower with a basement carpark, which is recommended by the Australian Building Codes Board to represent the typical office building found in the central business district (CBD) of the capital cities or major regional centres in Australia. Through building computer simulations, the increased cooling loads imposed by potential global warming is quantified. The probable indoor temperature increases and overheating problems due to heat load exceeding the capacity of installed air-conditioning systems are also presented. It is shown that in terms of the whole building indoor thermal environment, existing buildings would generally be able to adapt to the increasing warming of the 2030 year Low and High scenarios projections and the 2070 year Low scenario projection. For the 2070 year High scenario, the study indicates that the existing office buildings in all capital cities will suffer from the overheating problem. To improve the building thermal comfort to an acceptable standard (ie, less than 5% of occupied hours having indoor temperature over 25°), a further increase of 4-10% of building cooling load is required. The sensitivity of different office building zoning (i.e. zone at different floors and/or with different window orientation) to the potential global warming is also investigated. It is shown that for most cities, the ground floor, and the South or Core zone would be most sensitive to the external temperature change and has the highest tendency to having the overheating problem. By linking building energy use to CO2 emissions, the possible increase of CO2 emissions due to increased building energy use is also estimated. The adaptation potential of different designs of building physical properties to global warming is then examined and compared. The parametric factors studied include the building insulation levels, window to wall ratio, window glass types, and internal load density. It is found that overall, an office building with a lower insulation level, smaller window to wall ratio and/or a glass type with lower shading coefficient, and lower internal load density will have the effect of lowering building cooling load and total energy use, and therefore have a better potential to adapt to the warming external climate. This phenomenon can be linked to the nature of internal-load dominated office-building characteristics. Based on these findings, a series of design and adaptation strategies have been proposed and evaluated.

The overall goals of this dissertation are to investigate the sustainability of the built environment, holistically, by assessing its Triple Bottom Line (TBL): environmental, economic, and social impacts, as well as propose cost-effective, socially acceptable, and environmentally benign policies using several decision support models. This research is anticipated to transform life cycle assessment (LCA) of the built environment by using a TBL framework, integrated with economic input-output analysis, simulation, and multicriteria optimization tools. The major objectives of the outlined research are to (1) build a system-based TBL sustainability assessment framework for the sustainable built environment, by (a) advancing a national TBL-LCA model which is not available for the United States of America; (b) extending the integrated sustainability framework through environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators; and (2) develop a systembased analysis toolbox for sustainable decisions including Monte Carlo simulation and multi-criteria compromise programming. When analyzing the total sustainability impacts by each U.S. construction sector, “Residential Permanent Single and Multi-Family Structures" and "Other Non-residential Structures" are found to have the highest environmental, economic, and social impacts compared to other construction sectors. The analysis results also show that indirect suppliers of construction sectors have the largest sustainability impacts compared to onsite activities. For example, for all U.S. construction sectors, on-site construction processes are found to be responsible for less than 5 % of total water consumption, whereas about 95 iv % of total water use can be attributed to indirect suppliers. In addition, Scope 3 emissions are responsible for the highest carbon emissions compared to Scope 1 and 2. Therefore, using narrowly defined system boundaries by ignoring supply chain-related impacts can result in underestimation of TBL sustainability impacts of the U.S. construction industry. Residential buildings have higher shares in the most of the sustainability impact categories compared to other construction sectors. Analysis results revealed that construction phase, electricity use, and commuting played important role in much of the sustainability impact categories. Natural gas and electricity consumption accounted for 72% and 78% of the total energy consumed in the U.S. residential buildings. Also, the electricity use was the most dominant component of the environmental impacts with more than 50% of greenhouse gases emitted and energy used through all life stages. Furthermore, electricity generation was responsible for 60% of the total water withdrawal of residential buildings, which was even greater than the direct water consumption in residential buildings. In addition, construction phase had the largest share in income category with 60% of the total income generated through residential building’s life cycle. Residential construction sector and its supply chain were responsible for 36% of the import, 40% of the gross operating surplus, and 50% of the gross domestic product. The most sensitive parameters were construction activities and its multiplier in most the sustainability impact categories. v In addition, several emerging pavement types are analyzed using a hybrid TBL-LCA framework. Warm-mix Asphalts (WMAs) did not perform better in terms of environmental impacts compared to Hot-mix Asphalt (HMA). Asphamin® WMA was found to have the highest environmental and socio-economic impacts compared to other pavement types. Material extractions and processing phase had the highest contribution to all environmental impact indicators that shows the importance of cleaner production strategies for pavement materials. Based on stochastic compromise programming results, in a balanced weighting situation, Sasobit® WMA had the highest percentage of allocation (61%), while only socio-economic aspects matter, Asphamin® WMA had the largest share (57%) among the WMA and HMA mixtures. The optimization results also supported the significance of an increased WMA use in the United States for sustainable pavement construction. Consequently, the outcomes of this dissertation will advance the state of the art in built environment sustainability research by investigating novel efficient methodologies capable of offering optimized policy recommendations by taking the TBL impacts of supply chain into account. It is expected that the results of this research would facilitate better sustainability decisions in the adoption of system-based TBL thinking in the construction field.

This item contains the agenda, minutes, and attachments for the Faculty Senate meeting on this date. There may be additional materials from the meeting available at the Faculty Center.

The goal of the thesis is firstly to get all the information about the initial state of solved block of flats, which is located on the street Merhautova 76/954 in Brno – Černá pole, in terms of constructions, energy consumption and initial state of heating system. In the second part of the thesis, where are discussed the possibilities of reduction of energy consumption, variant drafts of reduction of energy consumption and their financial costs and the choice of optimal variant. Third part deals with assement of solved block of flats in terms of sustainable built environment by using tool to rate buildings in terms of sustainable built environment - SBToolCZ, evaluation of possibility to use renewables. In the end are written summaries and recommendations.