The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) has been adopted for use in achieving national building code compliance since 2006 in Australia. The NatHERS-accredited software packages integrate a set of predefined occupant behaviors for house energy rating. The aim of this project is to collaboratively investigate and provide evidence-based recommendations on occupant behavioral settings for house energy rating in Australia. The recommendations will target potential changes in National Construction Code.

(Funded by CSIRO)

The objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive analytical framework that can support the comparison and decision-making in the context of decommissioning waste management.

(Funded by Woodside Energy)

Existing studies have indicated organizational and well-being benefits of mass timber buildings such as reduced illness increased job performance and reduced stress and fatigue. In this study we aim to collect measured data, combining the data with surveys and interviews to create metrics to demonstrate workplace wellness and productivity in mass timber buildings. This study searches the economic benefits of mass timber buildings by analyzing health-related cost savings, performance improvements, reduced absenteeism, and workplace engagement.

(with QUT and MU colleagues, funded by Building 4.0 CRC and industry partners)

The idea of the intelligent system, originally applied to electrical, mechanical, and aerospace systems, has now extended to environmental engineering. Following the 4 levels of connected things defined by Harvard Business School, the term “intelligent system” in Environmental Engineering Education refers to a continuum of applications involving monitoring, control, optimization, and autonomy (MCOA) technologies to study human interactions with the built and natural environment. This project is to upgrade a walk-in size environmental chamber to unlock our capability in MCOA research and education.

(Funded by MU)

Although significant claims exist with regards the benefits of utilising offsite construction, often, these are anecdotal, context-specific, and challenging to quantify in comparison to business-as-usual. Previous CRC project findings suggest that the benefits of offsite construction are often not realised because the design consultants, developers, and builders do not effectively collaborate to deliver integrated solutions. This project will document, benchmark, and suggest improvements to realise the benefits in offsite construction using an offsite timber pilot project in Malvern East.

(With UoM and MU colleagues, funded by Building 4.0 CRC and industry partners)

Digital twins are an emerging technology with the potential to revolutionise the building industry by digitising the operation and maintenance of physical assets. However, several challenges need to be overcome before their widespread adoption in the built environment. The Monash Smart Manufacturing Hub (mSMH) aims to tackle these challenges through the creation and utilisation of a digital twin for the hub. This endeavor will focus on assessing the performance of the digital twin by using the built environment’s resilience and well-being as a case study. The project entails enhancing the existing design and deployment of a multimodal sensing network, a data engineering and analytics platform, domain-specific data analytics and simulation applications, as well as a front-end portal for spatial visualisation and interaction with sensing data and simulation results.

(With UoM and MU colleagues, funded by Building 4.0 CRC and industry partners)

Building performance simulation models are commonly used to predict the performance of buildings in terms of energy consumption, carbon emissions, or occupant comfort-related metrics. However, such tools tend to treat occupants in very simple ways that fail to recognize their stochastic, diverse, and reactive nature, affecting the quality of their estimates. This project fills the gap by developing a digital suite to holistically describe the “human dimension” of building energy and carbon emission performance.

(Funded by CSIRO)

While operational carbon is produced during the day-to-day activities of running and using a building, the embodied emissions from producing and installing construction components, as well as the end-of-life stages of a building account for significant life cycle impacts. For the industry to make headway in understanding the overall carbon impact of the built sector, whole-life carbon must be assessed. This project develops a customized spreadsheet to estimate the whole-life carbon footprint of three structure designs. It also unlocks the capacity for sensitivity analysis of a range of factors, including system boundary, background database for emission factors, carbon sequestration for timber material, material end-of-life and recycling options, assumptions of materials’ lifetime and building service life, and alternative technologies for steel making.

(Funded by Building 4.0 CRC and industry partners)

This study is part of a larger scoping project aimed at defining a knowledge base for developing a low-carbon floor system capable of spanning 8m while satisfying a range of criteria necessary for large-scale applications in multi-storey residential buildings. This study proposes a 2-phase approach to environmental benchmarking. Phase 1, uses Material Flow Analysis as a basis for a streamlined approach to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to generate environmental performance indicators to inform the selection of one or multiple floor systems for future stages of the project. Phase 2 relies on the standard LCA methodology to quantify the environmental impacts of one or various floor systems in detail.

(With MU and UoM colleagues, funded by Building 4.0 CRC and industry partners)

The increasing concern about indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of school classrooms has been underpinned by the following facts: i) children spend a substantial amount of their lives on the school premises and they are more susceptive to asthma and respiratory disease compared with adults; ii) it is well documented that poor IEQ can impair teaching and learning performance; iii) Classrooms generally accommodate a large number of children, which lead to a high concentration of air pollutants and uncomfortable environment; iv) High variations in temperature and humidity owing to extreme weather conditions, combined with the increasing contamination of outdoor air poses an additional challenge to maintain good IEQ in school spaces. Through a continuous monitoring campaign, this project reveals the spatiotemporal pattern of indoor environmental quality and develops cost-effective mitigation approaches to control human-induced emissions in primary school classroom settings.

(Funded by Aurecon)

Humans relate to the living environment physically and psychologically. Environmental psychology has a rich developed history while experience design emerged recently in the industrial design domain. Nonetheless, these approaches have barely been merged, understood, or implemented in architectural design practices. This study explores the correlation between experience design and environmental psychology. Moreover, it conducts literature reviews on theories about emotion, user experience design, experience design, and environmental psychology, followed by the analyses of spatial settings and environmental quality data of a selected aged care facility in Victoria, Australia, as a case study. Accordingly, this study proposes a research framework on environmental experience design (EXD).

(With UoM colleagues, funded by UoM IRD)

Traffic-related air pollution is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Commuters appear to be at particular risk because of their daily exposure to traffic-related air pollution. Data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey suggests that commuters in Melbourne would travel the equivalent of ~10 times around the world or about 492,000km during their working lives. A number of studies have investigated pollution levels on different routes and modes, suggesting that routes and modes can be chosen to reduce exposure. However, studies of Melburnians making realistic choices regarding route and mode are limited. This study employs a crossover design on a panel of commuters living and working within Melbourne to assess the impact of transport mode (active, public, and private transport) and route type (the roadside greenery, traffic density) on exposure to traffic-related air pollutants. The outcome of this work could inform the urban design for people’s health and well-being.

(Funded by UoM ECR)