Sustainability of the built environment is one of the most significant challenges facing the construction industry, and presents significant opportunities to affect change. The absence of quantifiable and holistic sustainability measures for the built environment has hindered their application. As a result, a sustainability performance metric (SPM) framework was conceptually formulated by employing sustainability objectives and function statements a-priori to identify the correlated sustainability indicators that need to be captured equally, with respect to the environment, the economy, and society. Projection to Latent Structures (PLS), a latent variable method, was adopted to mathematically formulate the metric. Detached single-family housing was used to demonstrate the application of SPM. Datasets were generated using Athena Impact Estimator, EnergyPlus, Building Information Modelling (BIM), Socioeconomic Input/Output models, among others. Results revealed that a holistic metric, such as the SPM is necessary to obtain a sustainable design, where qualitative or univariate considerations may result in the contrary. A building envelope coefficient of performance (BECOP) metric based on an idealized system was also developed to measure the energy efficiency of the building envelope. Results revealed the inefficiencies in the current building envelope construction technologies and the missed opportunities for saving energy. Furthermore, a decision-making tool, which was formulated using the PLS utilities, was shown to be effective and necessary for early stages of the design for energy efficiency. / Thesis / Doctor of Science (PhD) / Sustainability of the built environment is a significant challenge facing the industry, and presents opportunities to affect changes. The absence of holistic sustainability measures has hindered their application. As a result, a sustainability performance metric (SPM) framework was formulated by employing sustainability objectives and function statements a-priori to identify the indicators that need to be captured. Projection to Latent Structures was adopted to mathematically formulate the metric. A housing prototype was used to demonstrate the application of the SPM utilizing a bespoke dataset. Results revealed that holistic metric, such as the SPM is necessary for achieving sustainable designs. A building envelope coefficient of performance metric was also developed to measure the energy efficiency of the building envelope. Results revealed the inefficiencies in the current building envelope technologies and identified missed opportunities. Furthermore, a decision-making tool was formulated and shown to be effective and necessary for design for energy efficiency.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/25136 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Marjaba, Ghassan |
| Contributors | Chidiac, Samir, Civil Engineering |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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