Application of the Renewable Energy Sources at District Scale—A Case Study of the Suburban Area

The protection of the natural environment and countering global warming are crucial worldwide issues. The residential sector has a significant impact on overall energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is extremely important to focus on all of the activities that can result in more energy efficient and sustainable city scale areas, preventing global warming. The highest improvement in the energy efficiency of existing buildings is possible by combining their deep refurbishment and the use of renewable energy sources (RES), where solar energy appears to be the best for application in buildings. Modernizations that provide full electrification seem to be a trend towards providing modern, energy efficient and environmentally friendly, smart buildings. Moreover, switching from an analysis at the single building level to the district scale allows us to develop more sustainable neighborhoods, following the urban energy modelling (UEM) paradigm. Then, it is possible to use the energy cluster (EC) concept, focusing on energy-, environmental- and economic-related aspects of an examined region. In this paper, an actual Polish suburban district is examined using the home-developed TEAC software. The software is briefly described and compared with other computer codes applied for UEM. In this study, the examined suburban area is modernized, assuming buildings’ deep retrofitting, the application of RES and energy storage systems, as well as usage of smart metering techniques. The proposed modernizations assumed full electrification of the cluster. Moreover, the examined scenarios show potential electricity savings up to approximately 60%, as well as GHG emission reduction by 90% on average. It is demonstrated that the proposed approach is a valid method to estimate various energy- and environment-related issues of modernization for actual residential clusters.

Compassion: the legacy of the pandemic in rural schools and communities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how rural schools and communities responded to the COVID-19 pandemic through compassionate care. Design/methodology/approach This paper provides “compassion narratives” (Frost et al., 2006, p. 851) from five educators (i.e. the authors) working and/or living in rural communities. Each narrative describes how compassion was witnessed and experienced from various professional positions (which include classroom teacher; building-level leader; district-level leader; special services director and school psychologist; and assistant professor of educational leadership). Findings The compassion narratives described in this paper demonstrate how various organizations and communities responded to COVID-19 through compassionate care. They also provide a lens for considering how rural schools and communities might sustain compassion in a post-pandemic world. Originality/value This paper extends disciplinary knowledge by considering the healing, transformative power of compassion within rural schools and communities – not just in response to COVID-19 but in response to all future adversities.

Whole building life cycle assessment at the design stage: a BIM-based framework using environmental product declaration

PurposeWhole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA) is a key methodology to reduce the environmental impacts in the building sector. Research studies usually face challenges in presenting comprehensive LCA results due to the complexity of assessments at the building level. There is a dearth of methods for the systematic evaluation and optimization of the WBLCA performance at the design stage. The study aims to develop a design optimization framework based on the proposed WBLCA method to evaluate and improve the environmental performance at the building level.Design/methodology/approachThe WBLCA development method is proposed with detailed processes based on the EN 15978 standard. The environmental product declaration (EPD) methods were adopted to ensure the WBLCA is comprehensive and reliable. Building information modeling (BIM) was used to ensure the building materials and assembly contributions are accurate and provide dynamic material updates for the design optimization framework. Furthermore, the interactive BIM-LCA calculation processes were demonstrated for measuring the environmental impacts of design upgrades. The TOPSIS-based LCA results normalization was selected to conduct the comparisons of various building design upgrades.FindingsThe case study conducted for a residential building showed that the material embodied impacts and the operational energy use impacts are the two critical factors that contribute 60–90% of the total environmental impacts and resource uses. Concrete and wood are the main material types accounting for an average of 65% of the material embodied impacts. The air and water heating for the house are the main energy factors, as these account for over 80% of the operational energy use. Based on the original WBLCA results, two scenarios were established to improve building performance through the design optimization framework.Originality/valueThe LCA results show that the two upgraded building designs create an average of 5% reduction compared with the original building design and improving the thermal performance of the house with more insulation materials does not always reduce the WBLCA results. The proposed WBLCA method can be used to compare the building-level environmental performances with the similar building types. The proposed framework can be used to support building designers to effectively improve the WBLCA performance.

Room-Level Ventilation in Schools and Universities

Ventilation is of primary concern for maintaining healthy indoor air quality and reducing the spread of airborne infectious disease, including COVID-19. In addition to building-level guidelines, increased attention is being placed on room-level ventilation. However, for many universities and schools, ventilation data on a room-by-room basis are not available for classrooms and other key spaces. We present an overview of approaches for measuring ventilation along with their advantages and disadvantages. We also present data from recent case studies for a variety of institutions across the United States, with various building ages, types, locations, and climates, highlighting their commonalities and differences, and examples of the use of this data to support decision making.

Standardizing Performance Metrics for Building-Level Electrical Distribution Systems

Building-level electrical distribution systems comprise a myriad of current-carrying equipment, conversion devices, and protection devices that deliver power from the utility or local distributed energy resources to end-use building loads. Electric power has traditionally been generated, transmitted, and distributed in ac. However, the last decade has seen a significant increase in the integration of native dc equipment that has elevated the importance of dc distribution systems. Numerous studies have comparatively examined the performance of various electrical distribution systems in buildings but have failed to achieve uniform conclusions, primarily because of a lack of consistent and analogous performance evaluation methods. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a standard set of metrics and measurement boundaries to consistently evaluate the performance of ac, dc, or hybrid ac/dc electrical distribution systems. The efficacy of the proposed approach is evaluated on a representative medium-sized commercial office building model with ac distribution and an equivalent hybrid ac/dc and dc distribution model, wherein the ac distribution model is concluded to be the most efficient. The simulation results show variation in computed metrics with different selected boundaries that verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach in ensuring consistent computation of the performance of building-level electrical distribution systems. This paper provides an initial set of guidelines for building energy system stakeholders to adopt appropriate solutions, thus leading to more efficient energy systems.

Uji Eksperimental Respon Struktur 3D Modelling Struktur Portal Open Frame dan Struktur Portal Bresing terhadap Beban Gempa

One of the obstacles in laboratory testing is the availability of testing capacity. So that the similitude method was developed which aims to replicate the state of the prototype by scaling the variables so that they can be tested in the laboratory. The purpose of this study was to determine the difference between the results of numerical tests and experimental tests on the response of the open frame portal structure and the braced portal structure to the perpindahan parameters and the driftt ratio of the steel portal structure in earthquake buildings. The method used in this research is the experimental test method. From the analysis results, the largest perpindahan difference between the numerical test and the experimental test of the open frame portal structure is on the 4th floor, with a difference of 21,8 mm, while the largest perpindahan difference in the braced structure is on the 6th floor with a difference of 14,54 mm. The highest perpindahan difference is between numerical tests and experimental tests that occur on the open frame structure are on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th floors while those that occur on the braced structure are on the 5th, 6th, and 7th floors but the experimental perpindahan test is still within the permit limits for structural planning and if reviewed from the driftt ratio results, the results exceed the allowable driftt ratio limit of 2% of the height of each building level located on the 1st and 6th floors of the open frame portal structure and on the 5th floor of the braced portal structure.

Wastewater network infrastructure in public health: Applications and learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic

Accurate estimates of COVID-19 burden of infections in communities can inform public health strategy for the current pandemic. Wastewater based epidemiology (WBE) leverages sewer infrastructure to provide insights on rates of infection by measuring viral concentrations in wastewater. By accessing the sewer network at various junctures, important insights regarding COVID-19 disease activity can be gained. The analysis of sewage at the wastewater treatment plant level enables population-level surveillance of disease trends and virus mutations. At the neighborhood level, WBE can be used to describe trends in infection rates in the community thereby facilitating local efforts at targeted disease mitigation. Finally, at the building level, WBE can suggest the presence of infections and prompt individual testing. In this critical review, we describe the types of data that can be obtained through varying levels of WBE analysis, concrete plans for implementation, and public health actions that can be taken based on WBE surveillance data of infectious diseases, using recent and successful applications of WBE during the COVID-19 pandemic for illustration.