Eco-design of Buildings and Infrastructure: (Sustainable Cities Research Series)

The Chair on Ecodesign for buildings and infrastructures was created by ParisTech in partnership with VINCI with the aim of developing evaluation and simulation tools that integrate all ecodesign aspects (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, impact on biodiversity, depletion of resources, etc.) and provide genuine decision-aid instruments, based on a scientific approach, to all those involved in the urban environment (i.e. designers, builders and users). The present book takes stock of five years of research under the Chair. It starts by presenting some methodological bases of ecodesign, life cycle assessments, impact studies, and methods for planning and transport. Several specific subjects are then covered, i.e. public transport, parking, road traffic, the environmental profile of building materials, building retrofits, energy management, and biodiversity. The last part of the book sets out how the knowledge and tools developed under the Chair were applied to a case study: Cité Descartes in Marne la Vallée (Ile de France). This work is aimed at urban planners, local authorities, contracting clients, architects, engineering firms, contractors, building managers, research lecturers, and anyone interested in the environmental quality of the places we live in.

Table of Contents:
Foreword. Methodological Bases. Using Eco-Design Tools as a Cognitive Support for Creating the Urban Fabric. Life Cycle Assessment Applied to Neighbourhoods. Methods for Evaluating Environmental Impacts. Analysis and Proposals. The Planning of Territorial Facilities Taking an Ecodesign Approach: Principles and Methods for Land Use and Transportation. Practicing eco-design. Urban Economics and Passenger Transportation: Concentrate Flows, Design Lines. The Eco-Design of Parking Systems: Systemic Analysis and Simulation Tool. Eco-operation of road traffic. A model of passenger traffic in public transport, sensitive to capacity constraints. Environmental information module of construction materials Retrofitting buildings. Energy efficient building control strategies. Ecodesign in practice: How does urban biodiversity fit in? Application to a case study, Cité Descartes. Extended Cité Descartes: a territory to ecodesign. Territory and transport in a metropolitan context. Activities, Accessibility and Mobility at neighbourhood scale. Comparison of urban morphologies using life cycle assessment. Study of Cité Descartes: Application of tools to consider biodiversity for urban developments. Annexes. Conclusions and perspectives. Epilogue: the corporate point of view.

About the Author :
Bruno Peuportier holds an engineering degree from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, and a PhD degree from Universite Paris VI. He is presently senior scientist at the Centre for Energy Efficiency of Systems of MINES Paristech, Paris. He has developed software tools for green design: COMFIE (thermal simulation) and EQUER (life cycle assessment). He has carried out several demonstration projects regarding the construction or renovation of public housing, office buildings and schools, and has coordinated several European projects in these fields. Fabien Leurent is senior scientist at Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Laboratory on City, Mobility and Transportation. He is specialized in territorial system analysis and transportation networks, about which he developed a number of models, from traffic models to economic models of supply-demand equilibrium. His main research interests pertain to urban mobility and its different modes from the car to transit passing by shared vehicles and to the interaction between land use and transportation systems, with special emphasis on the formation of housing prices. Jean Roger-Estrade is teaching soil science and agroecology to undergraduate and graduate students, with, for the later, a special interest for the modelling of the effects of cropping systems on soil quality and biodiversity. His research interests are conservation agriculture, urban agriculture and the effects of these activities on biodiversity. He has carried out several projects related to the assessment of the ecological impacts of infrastructures and the modeling of biodiversity in urban areas. He is presently member of the executive committee of the Chair Eco-design of buildings and infrastructures.

Review :
"The book is well-presented and is a good mix between new insights on a theoretical level, detailed description of models and tools and application possibilities in the case study. It is founded on well-known environmental approaches and builds on new insights into current sustainable-oriented techniques. Due to the multiple approaches, the book is of interest to a large community of urban and transportation planners, architects, building-oriented engineers and contractors. It is aimed at professionals researchers and teachers in the field of energy, life cycle and environmental impact as well as local authorities and teachers." Prof. Niklaus Kohler, professor at the Department of Architecture, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.