Identification of Embodied Environmental Attributes of Construction in Metropolitan and Growth Region of Melbourne, Australia to Support Urban Planning

Abstract

As growth regions evolve to accommodate the increasing population, they need to develop a wider variety of residential properties to accommodate the varying needs of the residents. As a result, the new accommodation is denser which involves higher embodied water carbon and energy. This research compares the construction differences in metropolitan and growth regions of Melbourne to identify embodied carbon, water, and energy. Representative areas of 25 km2 are selected from both regions. The growth region has 80% of the built area comprised of 2nd generation low-rise residential buildings whereas the prolific construction type in the Metropolitan region is mixed purpose industrial with 30% of the built area comprising of this type. The methodology implies open-source satellite imagery to build a spatial dataset in QGIS. The visual identification of the constructions in the study areas enables to identity the materials used in their construction. The total embodied carbon, water, and energy for the Metropolitan region are 32,895 tonnes, 4192 mL, and 3,694,412 GJ, respectively, whereas in the growth region, the totals are 179,376 tonnes carbon, 2533 mL water, and 2,243,571 GJ. Whilst Metropolitan has a significantly higher overall footprint when this is compared to the population of each region, it is shown that the growth region with its current construction type has a higher embodied carbon, water, and energy per head. The total per head for Metropolitan is 226.7 GJ energy, 257 kL water, and 20 tonnes carbon, whereas in the growth region, the embodied energy, water, and carbon, respectively, per head is 287.4 GJ, 324.6 kL, and 22 tonnes. The current performance per head of the growth region is considerably lower than that of Metropolitan. Using diverse residential construction types and efficient materials can serve the demanding needs of denser populated areas.

Embodied Carbon in Australian Residential Houses: A Preliminary Study

“…With population growth in metropolitan and regional areas in Australia, there is a wider development in residential properties that in turn contributes to higher embodied carbon [18]. There have been several studies conducted on EC in the residential sector in Australia.…”

“…Ref. [18] identified that building materials such as structural steel, concrete, composite concrete, and rebar have higher levels of embodied carbon compared to timber in metropolitan areas, as opposed to regional areas, in Australia. This discrepancy was mainly attributed to the growth of residential construction in regional areas.…”

A Systematic Review on the Existing Research, Practices, and Prospects Regarding Urban Green Infrastructure for Thermal Comfort in a High-Density Urban Context

“…There are more cities and countries still struggling to establish a clear agenda and consistent policy regarding the implementation of UGI. There is a clear consensus among the researchers that the reasons for the slow progress of UGI development are mainly because of the competition for space in cities, the difficulty of finding finance, uncertainty regarding the economic benefits of GI, the complexity of dealing with a living infrastructure, a lack of policy and standardized practices, slow adoption and a lack of awareness of new ideas [28][29][30][31][32]. It is necessary to further investigate the current practice of UGI for thermal comfort to provide more information related to UGI practices, to achieve a better understanding of UGI designs, the appropriate methods, performance evaluations, and the potential parameters that can be achieved.…”

A Scheduling Method of Using Multiple SAR Satellites to Observe a Large Area

“…Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites can acquire images of specified areas of the Earth’s surface at observation requests with all-day and all-weather imaging capacity [ 1 , 2 ]. Image products acquired by SAR satellites are widely used in many fields, such as emergency response in environments [ 3 ], target recognition and classification [ 4 ], urban planning and architectural layout [ 5 ], and crop detection and disaster prevention [ 6 , 7 ]. With the enhancement of imaging capabilities of SAR and the rapid growth in the number of SAR satellites, customers are increasingly demanding timeliness in SAR image acquisition [ 8 ].…”