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1. Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment of a Living Building

   https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)AE.1943-5568.0000436  

   Gardner, Haley M.; Hasik, Vaclav; Banawi, Abdulaziz; Olinzock, Maureen; Bilec, Melissa M. (December 2020, Journal of Architectural Engineering)
2. Whole-Building Life-Cycle Assessment in the Built Environment: A Ten- and Six-Story Shake-Table Test Building Case Study

   https://doi.org/10.13073/FPJ-D-24-00030R1  

   Kontra, Steven; Barbosa, Andre R; Sinha, Arijit; Mishra, Prashanna; McBain, Morgan; Pei, Shiling; van_de_Lindt, John W; Simpson, Barbara G (January 2025, Forest Products Journal)

   Abstract The utilization of mass timber engineered wood products has increased for new buildings aiming to reduce environmental impacts. Whole-building life-cycle assessment (WBLCA) has been used to quantify the environmental impacts for a building’s lifespan. While mechanisms for calculating the cradle-to-grave impacts of a single building are well established, there are few examples of WBLCA applied for buildings in their first and second life that can be used to inform perspectives and pathways related to the circular economy and lead to informed decision making. This work presents a case study WBLCA to examine the effect of overlapping system boundaries and alternative end-of-life pathways for a building structure in its first and second life. This case study analyzed a ten-story mass timber shake-table specimen that was partially deconstructed and reused as a six-story shake-table building structure. Environmental impacts were analyzed in terms of global warming potential (GWP) calculated as the sum of fossil carbon, biogenic carbon, and avoided impacts. When examining reuse and landfill pathway alternatives using current standards and practices, results show that reusing material causes a positive GWP trend in the first system boundary and negative GWP trend in the second boundary. These results could indicate that it is not advantageous to reuse the ten-story building structure, running against principles of waste hierarchy, although the interpretation should be considered with caution. Future analyses could be improved by considering additional criteria such as demand on forest stocks, economic incentives, and even social impacts for a more complete representation of sustainability. 

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3. How Do Undergraduate Biology Instructors Engage With the Open Educational Resource Life Cycle?

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.835764  

   Senn, Lillian G.; Heim, Ashley B.; Vinson, Erin; Smith, Michelle K. (March 2022, Frontiers in Education)

   Open Educational Resources (OER) are widely used instructional materials that are freely available and promote equitable access. OER research at the undergraduate level largely focuses on measuring student experiences with using the low cost resources, and instructor awareness of resources and perceived barriers to use. Little is known about how instructors work with materials based on their unique teaching context. To explore how instructors engage with OER, we surveyed users of CourseSource , an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes lessons primarily for undergraduate biology courses. We asked questions aligned with the OER life cycle, which is a framework that includes the phases: Search , Evaluation , Adaptation , Use , and Share . The results show that OER users come from a variety of institution types and positions, generally have positions that focus more on teaching than research, and use scientific teaching practices. To determine how instructors engage throughout the OER life cycle, we examined the frequency of survey responses. Notable trends include that instructors search and evaluate OER based on alignment to course needs, quality of the materials, and ease of implementation. In addition, instructors frequently modify the published materials for their classroom context and use them in a variety of course environments. The results of this work can help developers design current and future OER repositories to better coincide with undergraduate instructor needs and aid content producers in creating materials that encourage implementation by their colleagues. 

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4. Integrating dairy manure for enhanced resource recovery at a WRRF: Environmental life cycle and pilot‐scale analyses

   https://doi.org/10.1002/wer.1574  

   Bryant, Casey; Coats, Erik R. (April 2021, Water Environment Research)

   Abstract The Twin Falls, Idaho wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), currently operates solely to achieve regulatory permit compliance. Research was conducted to evaluate conversion of the WWTP to a water resource recovery facility (WRRF) and to assess the WRRF environmental sustainability; process configurations were evaluated to produce five resources—reclaimed water, biosolids, struvite, biogas, and bioplastics (polyhydroxyalkanoates, PHA). PHA production occurred using fermented dairy manure. State‐of‐the‐art biokinetic modeling, performed using Dynamita's SUMO process model, was coupled with environmental life cycle assessment to quantify environmental sustainability. Results indicate that electricity production via combined heat and power (CHP) was most important in achieving environmental sustainability; energy offset ranged from 43% to 60%, thereby reducing demand for external fossil fuel‐based energy. While struvite production helps maintain a resilient enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) process, MgO₂production exhibits negative environmental impacts; integration with CHP negates the adverse consequences. Integrating dairy manure to produce bioplastics diversifies the resource recovery portfolio while maintaining WRRF environmental sustainability; pilot‐scale evaluations demonstrated that WRRF effluent quality was not affected by the addition of effluent from PHA production. Collectively, results show that a WRRF integrating dairy manure can yield a diverse portfolio of products while operating in an environmentally sustainable manner. Practitioner pointsWastewater carbon recovery via anaerobic digestion with combined heat/power production significantly reduces water resource recovery facility (WRRF) environmental emissions.Wastewater phosphorus recovery is of value; however, struvite production exhibits negative environmental impacts due to MgO₂production emissions.Bioplastics production on imported organic‐rich agri‐food waste can diversify the WRRF portfolio.Dairy manure can be successfully integrated into a WRRF for bioplastics production without compromising WRRF performance.Diversifying the WRRF products portfolio is a strategy to maximize resource recovery from wastewater while concurrently achieving environmental sustainability. 

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5. Life-Cycle Cost and Life-Cycle Assessment of a Monumental Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Reinforced Concrete Structure

   https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0002339  

   Cadenazzi, Thomas; Keles, Busra; Rahman, Muhammad K.; Nanni, Antonio (September 2022, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management)