Towards Zero Carbon: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Conventional Renovation Strategies for Terraced Houses, Using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to Enhance Decision-Making Support – accompanied by the design of a tool: Support for short term and long term decision-making in renovation

To reduce global warming the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) must be net zero in 2050, Paris agreement. In the Netherlands the building sector is responsible for 38% of total GHG emissions, 27% being operational carbon (related to energy use) and 11% embodied carbon (related to the use of materials). A large portion of the GHG emissions in...

Lowering ECI/MPG value by implementing sustainable foundations for houses

This research addresses the environmental impact of foundations in lightweight housing units, focusing on BAM's timber house concept, FLOW. While the engineered timber superstructure is environmentally conscious, the foundation's contribution is often overlooked. The study aims to minimise the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI) of FLOW houses by...

From least-weight to least-environmental-impacting truss structures: A method to minimize the total environmental cost with the Ground Structure Method for the welding, coating and construction material

Climate change is changing the world. Where previously efficient use of materials was mainly applied to realize cost savings, this can also help to reduce the footprint of a construction. There is a rather direct and obvious relationship between the amount of material required in a construction and its environmental impact. Of course, the...

Economic and environmental assessment of a CO₂ solar-powered plant with packed-bed thermal energy storage

Investigating supercritical natural fluids for efficient and clean energy production has become a trending research topic due to their technical and environmental advantages. However, on account of the supercritical operational conditions, using specially-developed components increases manufacturing prices, especially when dealing with solar...

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of Timber High-Rise: Research and Development of a Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Tool

There are two main challenges in the construction industry: carbon emissions and densification in cities. Timber high-rise might prove as a suitable solution to both these challenges. However, there is a lack of implementation of timber high-rise. This research argues that a lack of thorough analysis of timber design alternatives in the...

Green Refits: Reducing yacht operational emissions through refitting

This research aims to determine the cost effectiveness of yacht emission reducing ret options through marginal abatement cost curves. A broad selection of five refit options is evaluated and implemented in the created tool. Using multiple scenarios by fluctuating fuel price and the implementation of hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), the effect...

A decision support model for analysing the reuse potential of hollow-core slab floor components

This thesis ‘A decision support model for analysing the reuse potential of hollow-core slab floor components’ describes the development of a decision support model to investigate the reuse potential of a structural building component. For this research, the hollow-core slab floor component is chosen as the structural building component to be...