Decarbonizing the cement industry: Findings from coupling prospective life cycle assessment of clinker with integrated assessment model scenarios

In the race to achieve global climate neutrality, carbon intensive industries like the clinker and cement industry are required to decarbonize rapidly. The environmental impacts related to potential transition pathways to low-carbon systems can be evaluated using prospective life cycle assessment (pLCA). This study conducts a pLCA for future...

Hybrid Electric Taxiing Systems: An Operational and Economic Assessment

Fuel consumption during the taxi phase of flight can be reduced by using electric wheel propulsion instead of aircraft engines. Currently, this can be either done by having external trucks towing the aircraft from the gate to the runway, or by incorporating electric motors on the aircraft wheels to power the aircraft without using the engines....

Organisational Maturity Assessment during the Paradigm Shift from Monoliths to Data Mesh: Design Science Research in Developing a Data Mesh Maturity Assessment Model

Incorporating big data into decision-making provides a substantial competitive advantage, leading organisations to increasingly adopt a data-driven strategy. However, the adoption by organisations often remains unsuccessful due to limitations associated with monolithic data architectures, such as data lakes and data warehouses. Data mesh is...

Climate Justice Behind the Veil of Aggregation: IAMs, Equity, and Pareto-Optimal Abatement Pathways

Humanity faces the unprecedented global challenge of climate change. The sheer complexity and uncertainty of this problem renders mere intuitive reasoning insufficient. To aid global climate negotiations, Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are used to analyze the interplay between climate and the economy. More specifically, IAMs account for how...

Towards fossil free cities – Emission assessment of food and resources consumption with the FEWprint carbon accounting platform

Current urbanization rates concentrate the ever growing demand for food, energy and water (FEW) resources particularly in cities, making them one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. The FEW nexus integrative approach offers a potential framework for sustainable resource management in cities. However, existing nexus evaluation...

Global Material Stocks of Agricultural Field Machinery: Quantification of the Current In-Use Stock and Exploration of Future Pathways through a Material Stock Scenario Analysis

The growing demand for food production and the global developments regarding the intensification and mechanization of agriculture are likely to affect material use in the agricultural sector in some way in the future. This study addressed a research gap regarding the current and future material requirements of the global agricultural system, and...

Accounting for distributive justice in Integrated Assessment Models: Towards a more equitable climate policy agenda

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are widely used tools for estimating climate change's impacts on the socio-economic system. However, IAMs possess a limited ability to represent the impact on vulnerable populations. Influential IAMs use highly aggregated outcomes masking significant relative differences in impacts across heterogeneous...

The evolution and future perspectives of energy intensity in the global building sector 1971–2060

Energy efficiency plays an essential role in energy conservation and emissions mitigation efforts in the building sector. This is especially important considering that the global building stock is expected to rapidly expand in the years to come. In this study, a global-scale modeling framework is developed to analyze the evolution of building...

Enabling assessment of distributive justice through models for climate change planning: A review of recent advances and a research agenda

Models for supporting climate adaptation and mitigation planning, mostly in the form of Integrated Assessment Models, are poorly equipped for aiding questions related to fairness of adaptation and mitigation strategies, because they often disregard distributional outcomes. When evaluating policies using such models, the costs and benefits are...

Downscaling Integrated Assessment Models for Energy Transition Policy Support: Exploring Trade-offs and Limitations

Global Earth Systems Integrated Assessment Models are used by policymakers to understand the complex interactions between anthropogenic activity, including energy use, and its environmental impacts. However, they are computationally expensive, so spatiotemporal resolution is kept low as a trade-off. Generally, the smallest geopolitical component...

Mining global transport: Determining the material stocks (and flows) of global transport until 2050

The research for this thesis relates to the assessment of the material needs for the vehicle fleet for global passenger and freight transport. The specific vehicles in these two categories that were assessed are: maritime vessels, inland shipping vessels, trucks, planes, buses and trains which will be divided into smaller categories of vehicles....

The importance of stakeholders in scoping risk assessments—Lessons from low-carbon transitions

Identifying the risks that could impact a low-carbon transition is a prerequisite to assessing and managing these risks. We systematically characterise risks associated with decarbonisation pathways in fifteen case studies conducted in twelve countries around the world. We find that stakeholders from business, government, NGOs, and others...

The desirability of transitions in demand: Incorporating behavioural and societal transformations into energy modelling

Quantitative systems modelling in support of climate policy has tended to focus more on the supply side in assessing interactions among technology, economy, environment, policy and society. By contrast, the demand side is usually underrepresented, often emphasising technological options for energy efficiency improvements. In this perspective,...

Redefining Integrated Assessment Models: An Exploratory Approach Towards Robust Climate-Economic Policies

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are aiming to shed light on the cost-benefit of climate mitigations. However, current IAMs are depicted with a wide range of weaknesses. Next, to questionable assumptions of model functions, such as the damage function, IAMs are inadequate at addressing deeply uncertain parameters, such as the equilibrium...

(RE)DEVELOP THE FUTURE: An instrument to develop and implement the concept of circularity for the redevelopment initiation phase

Context - The current environmental situation as a result of human life reflects the demand for more consciousness on the embedded energy of buildings. Moreover, due to the recent economic crisis the perceived naturalness to demolish existing buildings for new development is outdated. Hence, new functions should be accommodated in existing...

Economic circularity in the built environment: An assessment and decision-making supporting model for the real estate sector & construction industry

The discourse on circular economy is characterized by perpetual disintegration whilst there is a need for assessment and decision-making supporting models. This normative study proposes a model that assesses the extent to which interventions in the built environment are in accordance with a circular economy (CE) and discloses the financials...

Reliability Analysis of Near Surface Disposal Facilities using Collocation Based Stochastic Response Surface Method

The safety assessment and reliability analysis are the two critical factors that affect the design of a complex structured system. In this paper, safety assessment model is used and the radiation dose of radionuclides are evaluated. The model is developed based on single dumping mode of disposal. In the present paper, radioactive carbon (14C) is...

Bouwbesluit 2003: Theorie en praktijk. Beoordelen en verder ontwikkelen van bouwvoorschriften

Van een optimaal voorschrift is sprake als door dat voorschrift een vooraf gesteld doel, tegen zo laag mogelijke extra kosten, in de praktijk is bereikt. Dit proefschrift beschrijft op welke wijze, met het effect op de praktijk als maatstaf, kan worden beoordeeld of sprake is van een optimaal voorschrift van Bouwbesluit 2003. Hiervoor is een...