International Resource Panel | EPFL Graph Search

The International Resource Panel is a scientific panel of experts that aims to help nations use natural resources sustainably without compromising economic growth and human needs. It provides independent scientific assessments and expert advice on a variety of areas, including:

the volume of selected raw material reserves and how efficiently these resources are being used
the lifecycle-long environmental impacts of products and services created and consumed around the globe
options to meet human and economic needs with fewer or cleaner resources. The Secretariat of the IRP is hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) through its office in Paris, France.

Structure of the IRP The Panel has more than 35 expert members drawn from a wide range of academic institutions and scientific disciplines, supported by a small Secretariat hosted by UNEP. It is co-chaired by Janez Potočnik, former European Commissioner for the Environment, and Izabella Teixei

LCA as key factor for implementation of inertia in a low carbon performance driven design: the case of the smart living building in Fribourg, Switzerland

Marilyne Andersen, Arianna Brambilla, Endrit Hoxha, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme

The building sector is known as a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption. These impacts are commonly evaluated by life cycle assessment (LCA), which assess the potential impacts of a building from the construction to the end of life. LCA considers: the operating impacts (OI) occurring during the service life of buildings, and the embodied impacts (EI) occurring during the other lifecycle. Materials usually increase EI, but some of them, such the ones used for thermal inertia (TI), concur to energy efficiency and can reduce OI. This makes it difficult to understand the role of such materials in low carbon building strategies. The aim of this study is to understand how to weigh the overall environmental benefits of TI. Four building models were used to assess LCA with either low, medium, high or very high levels of TI. These are reached using materials characterized by different embodied impacts, such as concrete and earth. The difference with the low inertia case, taken as the base case, is evaluated for each model regarding OI and EI. The comparison between OI and EI determines which scenario brings the lowest impacts on LCA. To evaluate how the results are influenced by climate change, the analysis is made with two different scenarios: one with the typical meteorological year (TMY, Meteonorm) and the other with the weather conditions for 2050 (IPCC, International Panel on Climate Change). The paper shows a methodology to evaluate the effects of a design strategy on the LCA, applied to the case of TI. It demonstrates that TI is not very relevant in the frame of this case study because the EI related to the added materials is higher than the induced operating savings. Furthermore, it has been demonstrate that in the future when the carbon content of the energy may be lower, TI can change its effects and influence negatively the lifecycle environmental impacts.

2016

Tidal dynamics of groundwater flow and contaminant transport in coastal aquifers, In

David Andrew Barry

Approximately 70% of the world's population lives in coastal areas, and the majority of these people depend on coastal aquifers for freshwater. The fragility of these aquifers and their sensitivity to human activity demand informed, competent management to guarantee their survival. Significant knowledge and new technologies related to the subject have accumulated in the last two decades, and a need has emerged for a comprehensive reference that gathers and disseminates crucial information to engineering practitioners and policymakers. Coastal Aquifer Management-Monitoring, Modeling, and Case Studies provides the most advanced and up-to-date methods and tools for the study and protection of coastal aquifers. This "how-to" volume presents a worldwide perspective with contributions from an international panel of experts. They address topics such as geohydrology, optimization, uncertainty analysis, and GIS as they relate to geographically-specific case studies; knowledge from these examples can be applied to aquifer issues in other regions.

Lewis Publishers2004

LCA as key factor for implementation of inertia in a low carbon performance driven design: the case of the smart living building in Fribourg, Switzerland

Marilyne Andersen, Arianna Brambilla, Endrit Hoxha, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme

2016