Year: 2021

INTRODUCTION: There are a growing number of students studying architecture in the Global South. There is also a clear and documented need for these architects due to the rapidly expanding populations, urbanisation and climate change. However, there is a dearth of built environment professionals able to teach them. This project reports on a strategy to…

INTRODUCTION: The climate emergency demands urgent action and leadership from architects/designers as well as the wider construction industry. Decisions that relate to the highest contributing materials to the lifetime carbon load of a building happen during the early design stage, for example structure and façade systems. With the rise of low energy technology and national…

INTRODUCTION: In less than three decades from today, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities. As cities become more densely populated and new developments are inevitable, more resources are needed to support the livelihood of people. As a result, resource consumptions, and consequently carbon emissions, from cities will continue to increase. Increasing…

INTRODUCTION: Timber is a natural product and is subject to natural defects that are either inherent to the material or derived from non-ideal conditions during processing. One defect that is of particular importance to timber products that are marketed primarily based on their appearance is discoloration, which can reduce the marketable grade of the timber…

INTRODUCTION: Australia’s current climate datasets were developed for thermal (heating and cooling) building performance simulations during a period where government policy pushed for a reduction of greenhouse gases. However, modern energy efficient buildings need to include hygrothermal envelope design. Significant concern has been raised about the appropriateness of the approved building energy efficiency climate data…

INTRODUCTION: Climate change has been a critical challenge faced by our world [1, 2]. Non-renewable energy sources accounted for about 73% of the world’s electricity generation in 2019 [3]. In Australia, 11% of the country’s total energy consumption is represented by the residential sector [4]. Space heating, space cooling, and domestic hot water (DHW) heating…

INTRODUCTION: Retrofitting existing housing needs to consider issues beyond energy efficiency and include other occupant concerns including aging in place (for an aging population), health and wellbeing, and increasingly, also, working productively from home. In Australia, about 30% of total energy consumption is from the housing sector (ABS, 2019), this comes from around 8.3 million…

INTRODUCTION: The combination of urban overheating due to urbanization and global climate change are leading to an increase in building cooling loads and outdoor air temperatures. This topic has been widely investigated, but a comprehensive appraisal of the direct and indirect benefits of heat mitigation is still needed. Here, we present the first results of…

INTRODUCTION: Approximately 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia are from non-residential buildings such as shops, hotels, restaurants, offices, industrial facilities, schools, and hospitals (Department of industry, science energy and resources 2021). Solar building envelope, also known as Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) technology, has been recognised as one of the most favourable Solar PV applications…

INTRODUCTION: The combination of global climate change and urban overheating are leading to an increase in peak summer temperatures and intensity of heatwaves. Urban overheating has consequences for human thermal comfort, health, building cooling energy needs, and even the ability to live outdoors in the public space during significant fractions of summertime, especially for the…

INTRODUCTION: Urgent changes are needed in the construction industry to meet short term mitigation goals for climate change. Traditionally, operational environmental flows have been the primary focus of regulations and current attempts to improve the environmental performance of buildings. However, studies have revealed that embodied environmental flows are often underestimated and rarely considered. Embodied environmental…

INTRODUCTION: Waste generated through the renovation and demolition of buildings makes up more than forty percent of international waste volumes. Buildings are prone to producing waste due to the way in which materials are joined together, and due to the highly bespoke nature of many building components. To address these issues there is an urgent…

INTRODUCTION: At the global level, the building industry is recognised as one of the main contributors to the depletion of natural resources and waste generation. The built environment is one of the major causes of air and water pollution, solid waste, deforestation, toxic wastes, health hazards, global warming, and other negative consequences (1-3). Existing buildings…

INTRODUCTION: The construction and demolition sectors produce about 40% of waste by mass worldwide. The circular economy framework posits that waste minimisation can be achieved by turning waste into new resources. The circular economy has gained substantial traction among practitioners and academics alike, and it is has been applied in many industry sectors, from the…

INTRODUCTION: Net Zero Carbon development is very much on the global agenda along with net zero everything else. It is often seen as something that needs big scale deployment of renewable energy in large solar farms or wind farms that simply feed green electrons into the same system we have already. Electric vehicles in this…

INTRODUCTION: The goal of this research is to increase awareness of various benefits of using municipal solid wastes as Anaerobic Digestion (AD) inputs to produce renewable energy in the city of Geelong. The results of this research will provide useful guidance to policy makers, the public, energy investors, food waste generators, and businesses that are…

RMIT is taking strategic steps to become carbon neutral by 2030, through genuine actions that demonstrate sustainability leadership in emissions reduction and innovative partnerships. Building on the success of delivering the largest energy performance contract in the southern hemisphere, RMIT has participated and led two large-scale corporate power purchase agreements, rolled out volumes of on-site…

RMIT is taking strategic steps to become carbon neutral by 2030, through genuine actions that demonstrate sustainability leadership in emissions reduction and innovative partnerships. Building on the success of delivering the largest energy performance contract in the southern hemisphere, RMIT has participated and led two large-scale corporate power purchase agreements, rolled out volumes of on-site…

INTRODUCTION: The energy usage of buildings in Australia is growing rapidly [1]. They account for 19% of Australia energy consumption and 23% of carbon emission [2]. Meanwhile, office buildings account for 60% energy usage for Australian building sector [1]. About 39% of the energy is used for heating, cooling, air-conditioning and ventilation (HVAC) systems in…

INTRODUCTION: Recent changes to planning policy in Greater Adelaide have resulted in the large-scale replacement of traditional one-storey detached dwellings with townhouses or blocks of flats. The new townhouses often rely on default layouts and construction methods that have already led to unhealthy levels of overheating, forecasted to increase further over the next decades. In…

INTRODUCTION: High rise residential buildings are becoming a significant portion of the Australia housing mix. Data from the 2016 census confirmed that the share of high-rise living has increased to 38% of all apartment dwellings as compared to only 18% reported for the 2006 census. Owing to their high energy use intensity per square meter…

INTRODUCTION: Buildings are responsible for almost 40% of all energy and process related greenhouse gas emissions globally. As such, charting strategies and developing policies to ensure the built environment achieves net-zero performance by at least 2050 is seen as essential for tackling the climate crisis. This must include not only operational emissions (from lighting, heating,…