All Outputs (34)

Globalised climate precarity: Environmental degradation, disasters and the international brick trade (2024)
Journal Article

Climate-linked disasters result when natural hazards meet socioeconomic precarity. Recognizing this, scholarship in recent years has emphasized how the precarity that turns climate-linked hazards into disasters is produced within the same global poli... Read More about Globalised climate precarity: Environmental degradation, disasters and the international brick trade.

Nature can cool cities, but proceed with caution (2023)
Journal Article

Increased extreme heat events draw attention to the potential of urban nature as a heat adaptation strategy for cities. This is reflected in multiple scientific perspective pieces, policy documents and science media publications advocating for urban... Read More about Nature can cool cities, but proceed with caution.

Demolition or retention of buildings: Drivers at the masterplan scale (2023)
Journal Article

Current adaptation theory tends to consider individual buildings or the city level, which cannot address decisions related to masterplan developments on large brownfield sites. This paper investigates the drivers for building demolition or retention... Read More about Demolition or retention of buildings: Drivers at the masterplan scale.

Demands, default options and definitions: How artefacts mediate sustainability in public housing projects in Sweden and Cyprus (2022)
Journal Article

Sustainable building design practices are influenced by requirements, guidelines, criteria for green procurement and certification, assessment tools such as life cycle assessment, etc. This study investigates how such artefacts support or define aspi... Read More about Demands, default options and definitions: How artefacts mediate sustainability in public housing projects in Sweden and Cyprus.

Embodied carbon, embodied energy and renewable energy: A review of Environmental Product Declarations (2022)
Journal Article

Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) to EN 15804 provide information about embodied carbon of construction products - their life cycle greenhouse gas emissions - alongside reporting use of renewable and non-renewable primary energy and secondary... Read More about Embodied carbon, embodied energy and renewable energy: A review of Environmental Product Declarations.

Embodied carbon of concrete in buildings, Part 2: Are the messages accurate? (2022)
Journal Article

This paper is the second output of a project that examines the embodied greenhouse gas emissions (‘embodied carbon’) from the use of concrete in buildings. In the current absence of either regulation or widespread industry practice in quantified carb... Read More about Embodied carbon of concrete in buildings, Part 2: Are the messages accurate?.

Trading disaster: Containers and container thinking in the production of climate precarity (2022)
Journal Article

This paper examines how global trade shapes and intensifies disasters. Juxtaposing three basic, everyday consumer goods – a t-shirt, a brick, and a tea bag – with disasters manifesting in their respective global supply chains, it highlights how clima... Read More about Trading disaster: Containers and container thinking in the production of climate precarity.

Modelling future trends of annual embodied energy of urban residential building stock in China (2022)
Journal Article

China is the largest driver of growth in the global building sector. The longstanding construction boom across China has generated a massive flow of materials with significant associated embodied energy consumption and carbon emissions. Despite the s... Read More about Modelling future trends of annual embodied energy of urban residential building stock in China.

Social value, infrastructure and stakeholder engagement: a complex triangle (2021)
Journal Article

Infrastructure is critical for the economic and social prosperity of society. Some large infrastructure projects are also critical for the future of society due to their intergenerational nature and long lifespan. Understanding the social value of in... Read More about Social value, infrastructure and stakeholder engagement: a complex triangle.

Retention not demolition: How heritage thinking can inform carbon reduction (2021)
Journal Article

Two key benefits of building retention and adaptation, over demolition and new build are identified in the academic literature as: the conservation of heritage, and reductions in embodied greenhouse gas emissions from construction materials. A four-y... Read More about Retention not demolition: How heritage thinking can inform carbon reduction.

Reducing carbon from heritage buildings: The importance of residents’ views, values and behaviours (2021)
Journal Article

Significant energy and carbon originate in the existing built environment and retrofit is therefore a key carbon reduction strategy. However heritage buildings -comprising around 20% of UK buildings- are challenging to retrofit appropriately due to t... Read More about Reducing carbon from heritage buildings: The importance of residents’ views, values and behaviours.

Rethinking retrofit of residential heritage buildings (2021)
Journal Article

What are the opportunities and challenges for upscaling the energy retrofit of heritage buildings? Heritage buildings comprise approximately 20% of the UK building stock and are challenging to retrofit sensitively because of their heritage values and... Read More about Rethinking retrofit of residential heritage buildings.

Developing a generic System Dynamics model for building stock transformation towards energy efficiency and low-carbon development (2020)
Journal Article

Promoting the decarbonisation of buildings requires effective policy measures. An integral part of policy design is ex-ante evaluation of possible policy options and effects. System Dynamics, one of a range of potential modelling paradigms, emphasise... Read More about Developing a generic System Dynamics model for building stock transformation towards energy efficiency and low-carbon development.

Forecasting urban residential stock turnover dynamics using system dynamics and Bayesian model averaging (2020)
Journal Article

Knowing the size of building stock is perhaps the most basic determinant in assessing energy use in buildings. However, official statistics on urban residential stock for many countries are piecemeal at best. Previous studies estimating stock size an... Read More about Forecasting urban residential stock turnover dynamics using system dynamics and Bayesian model averaging.

Embodied carbon of concrete in buildings, Part 1: Analysis of published EPD (2020)
Journal Article

Cement is responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is predicted to grow with increasing development. The majority is used in concrete, globally the most common material in buildings. Reducing emissions from the use of cement and con... Read More about Embodied carbon of concrete in buildings, Part 1: Analysis of published EPD.

Comparative life cycle analysis of façade passive systems in the Mediterranean: Comfort, energy, and carbon (2019)
Journal Article

In the Mediterranean region façade shading systems are used to reduce operational energy, particularly cooling loads. However, operational savings do not necessarily translate into net energy savings unless they outweigh the embodied energy/carbon re... Read More about Comparative life cycle analysis of façade passive systems in the Mediterranean: Comfort, energy, and carbon.

Arguments for a co-production approach to community flood protection (2019)
Journal Article

With more intense rainfall and sea level rises predicted, an increasing number of people across the UK are vulnerable to flood events. The government has pledged more funding for flood infrastructure planning, design and management. However, schemes... Read More about Arguments for a co-production approach to community flood protection.

Estimating lifetimes and stock turnover dynamics of urban residential buildings in China (2019)
Journal Article

Building lifetime and stock turnover are both key determinants in modelling building energy and carbon. However in China, aside from anecdotal claims that urban residential buildings are generally short-lived, there are no recent official statistics,... Read More about Estimating lifetimes and stock turnover dynamics of urban residential buildings in China.

Widening understanding of low embodied impact buildings: Results and recommendations from 80 multi-national quantitative and qualitative case studies (2019)
Journal Article

This paper publishes the results from a major five year International Energy Agency research project which investigated the reduction of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions over the whole life (‘cradle to grave’) of buildings. Annex 57 colla... Read More about Widening understanding of low embodied impact buildings: Results and recommendations from 80 multi-national quantitative and qualitative case studies.

Editorial: Gender and Intersectionality in Engineering (2019)
Journal Article

This Special Issue of the ?International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology? focuses on the issue of gender, and of how gender intersects with other aspects of diversity, in engineering. Published in 2019 in celebration of the 100th anniversar... Read More about Editorial: Gender and Intersectionality in Engineering.