Cross-laminated timber (CLT) used in the U.S. is mainly imported from abroad. In the existing literature, however, there are data on domestic transportation, but little understanding exists about the environmental impacts from the CLT import. Most studies use travel distances to the site based on domestic supply origins. The new Adohi Hall building at the University of Arkansas campus, Fayetteville, AR, presents the opportunity to address the multimodal transportation with overseas origin, and to use real data gathered from transporters and manufacturers. The comparison targets the environmental impacts of CLT from an overseas transportation route (Austria-Fayetteville, AR) to two other local transportation lines. The global warming potential (GWP) impact, from various transportation systems, constitutes the assessment metric. The findings demonstrate that transportation by water results in the least greenhouse gas (GHG) emission compared with freight transportation by rail and road. Transportation by rail is the second most efficient, and by road the least environmentally efficient. On the other hand, the comparison of the life cycle assessment (LCA) tools, SimaPro (Ecoinvent database) and Tally (GaBi database), used in this research, indicate a remarkable difference in GWP characterization impact factors per tonne.km (tkm), primarily due to the different database used by each software.
Abstract:Educational opportunities for students addressing issues in sustainable built environments are evolving with new learning approaches. Our study asked if technology mediated learning environments using AR (augmented reality) can enhance student learning in the architecture and engineering disciplines. There were multiple study sites, two of them University of Arkansas and Florida International University are discussed. At each site, three collaborative projects were assigned to student teams during fall 2016. Students analyzed an existing building and developed alternative solutions based on improving energy performance. Our paper presents: (1) the research challenge related to the integration of immersive head-mounted display technology providing visual simulations and interactive lessons for interdisciplinary collaboration; and (2) the progress of Phase 1 consisting of our control group results run without the use of AR technology.
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