Setting the stage

OK. I've been missing for a while now and I apologize.

As I have expressed previously, my research interest is in quantifying environmental impacts at a building scale (then I will perhaps look at larger scales) through its life cycle. I will use this blog as a place to organize my thoughts and hopefully get some feedback from professionals and other people with good common sense.

At this moment I am focusing on what some would call the embodied energy of materials. This is perhaps the area that is most directly relevant to my studies in Structural Engineering. When I say embodied energy, I am referring to the energy requirements to extract raw materials, process them and install them in a building. As one would expect, these are not necessarily values that can be tabulated and used uniformly throughout the world, as they vary from region to region and depend on the "upstream" sourcing and processing.

From a life cycle perspective this would cover all stages up until on-site construction. My next post thus, will attempt to offer a comprehensive overview of life cycle analysis in the context of buildings, focusing on how it helps answer the question of the upstream impacts of building materials.

After that I hope to be able to begin the very important Operation and Maintenance stage of buildings. Look for more posts soon.