Abdallah, M A A (2014) Optimizing the selection of sustainability measures for existing buildings. PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Abstract
Buildings in the United States have significant impacts on the natural environment, national economy, and society. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, buildings in the United States account for 41% of energy consumption, 73% of electricity consumption, 38% of carbon dioxide emissions, and 14% of potable water consumption. Furthermore, aging buildings represent a significant percentage of existing buildings and are often in urgent need for upgrading to improve their operational, economic, social, and environmental performance. The owners of these buildings often seek to identify and implement building upgrade measures that are capable of improving building sustainability as well as achieving certification under various green building programs such as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Several green upgrade measures can be used to improve the sustainability of existing buildings such as energy-efficient lighting and HVAC systems, photovoltaic systems, and water-saving plumbing fixtures. Decision makers often need to select an optimal set of these building upgrade measures in order to maximize the sustainability of their buildings while complying with available upgrade budgets. The main goal of this research study is to develop single and multi-objective models for optimizing the selection of sustainability measures for existing buildings. To accomplish this goal, the research objectives of this study are to (1) evaluate the actual operational performance of sustainability measures in existing buildings, (2) develop a novel LEED optimization model that is capable of achieving user-specified certification levels with minimum upgrade cost, (3) develop an innovative environmental model for minimizing the negative environmental impacts of existing buildings, (4) develop an economic model for minimizing building life-cycle cost, and (5) develop a multi-objective optimization model that is capable of generating optimal tradeoffs among the building sustainability objectives of minimizing negative environmental impacts, minimizing upgrade cost, and maximizing LEED points. The performance of the developed optimization models was analyzed and verified using case studies of public buildings. The results of analyzing these case studies illustrated the novel and unique capabilities of the developed models in searching for and identifying optimal sets of building upgrade measures for existing buildings. These new and unique capabilities are expected to support building owners and managers in their ongoing efforts to (i) achieve LEED certification, (ii) reduce building energy and water consumption, (iii) reduce building negative environmental impacts, and (iv) reduce building operational and life-cycle costs.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | El-Rayes, K A |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | energy consumption; optimization; sustainability; certification; environmental design; green building; leadership; United States; environmental performance; case study; environmental impact; owner |
| Index terms: | manager, United States, certification, carbon dioxide emission, society, tradeoff, upgrading, program, environmental impact, green building, water consumption, public building, environmental performance, case study, owner, economic model, environmental design, multi-objective optimization, building sustainability, energy-efficient lighting, energy consumption, photovoltaic, national economy, electricity consumption, plumbing |
| Subjects: | environmental resource management, economic analysis, strategic management, construction type, environmental impact, practitioner, climate science, communities and social development, sustainability assessment, algorithms, Geography, sustainability and energy, modelling and simulation, energy systems, data collection methods, mechanical systems, decision analysis, sociology, administrative processes, design practice, software systems |
| Topics: | Risk Management, Sustainability, Engineering Principles, Geographical Context, Contract Administration, Digital Applications, Design Practice, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Construction Technology, Business Strategy, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here