1,720,959 research outputs found
MULTICRITERIA PRIORITIZATION OF POLICY INSTRUMENTS IN BUILDINGS ENERGY RETROFIT
Full text linkImprovement of energy-efficiency in residential buildings is a crucial issue in Italy, where 55% of the building stock is older than 40 years and real estate assets are responsible for 33% of primary energy consumption. Consequently, the Italian residential sector offers considerable potential for reducing energy use and GHG emissions, particularly through energy-efficient renovations. Governments can introduce a wide range of policy instruments to encourage households in undertaking energy-efficient renovations: direct financial investments, regulatory instruments (e.g., performance and technology standards), economic and market-based instruments, support information and voluntary actions.
Since 2006, the Italian Government has introduced fiscal incentive programs to enhance energy efficiency in residential buildings. During the period 1998-2016 the cost for the Italian Government to due to fiscal incentives (i.e. tax deductions) was extremely high compared to tax revenues. Thus incentives turned out to be excessively costly and not cost-effective.
The design and implementation of incentive policies to buildings energy retrofit is a complex process involving a great number of decision variables and actors. Cost-effective incentive policies should prove capacity in stimulating investments, reducing social and environmental costs and promoting innovation. This complexity is exacerbated in the presence of stringent public budget constraints and lack of financial resources.
In order to favor the implementation of cost-effective retrofit strategies, the policy maker must take into consideration along with buildings age and construction materials, social costs and benefits, EU and national targets, and environmental concerns. In this context, where multiple objectives need to be pursued, multiple criteria approaches provide a methodological framework to address the complexity of economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental factors which characterize incentive policies. In this paper we propose a multi-criteria decision model to support the policy maker in ranking sustainable incentive policies. In detail, we provide an AHP model for multiple-criteria prioritization of policy instruments to foster investments in energy retrofit of existing buildings
Energy efficiency in buildings: willingness to pay for buildings energy retrofit
Full text linkThe aim of this research was to provide innovative valuation approaches of building energy retrofit projects. We analysed the cost-effectiveness of building energy retrofit projects taking into account the trade-offs between costs and direct, indirect, tangible and intangible benefits of retrofit solutions. In detail, the research focused on the estimation of the monetary value of benefits and co-benefits related to BER which may boost investment in building energy retrofit projects. In the end, we provided interesting policy implications to support the Italian Governments in the design of optimal incentive policies.Lo scopo di questa ricerca è quello di fornire approcci innovativi di valutazione economica dei progetti di riqualificazione energetica degli edifici. Abbiamo analizzato il rapporto costo-efficacia dei progetti di riqualificazione energetica degli edifici tenendo conto dei trade-off tra costi e benefici diretti, indiretti, tangibili e intangibili delle soluzioni di retrofit. Nel dettaglio, la ricerca si è concentrata sulla stima del valore monetario dei benefici e dei co-benefici relativi al retrofit energetico degli edifici che potrebbero favorire gli investimenti. Alla fine, abbiamo anche fornito interessanti implicazioni di policy per supportare i governi italiani nella progettazione di politiche di incentivazione
Prioritization of energy retrofit strategies in public housing: An AHP model
No full textThe design and implementation of buildings energy retrofit strategies is a complex process involving a great number of decision variables and actors, especially when public housing is concerned. This complexity is exacerbated by stringent public budget constraints and lack of financial resources that make public housing energy retrofit currently a critical issue in Italy. In this context, multiple objectives related to energy saving, thermal comfort and conservation compatibility need to be pursued and multiple criteria approaches provide a proper theoretical and methodological framework to address economic, technical, social and environmental issues that characterize investments in energy saving and retrofit strategies.
In this paper, we analyze different energy efficiency measures to be implemented in public housing and we propose an AHP (relative) model for multi-criteria prioritization of energy-retrofit strategies on public-housing existing stock
Experimental and numerical study of the cyclic behavior of exterior RC beam-column joints made with recycled concrete
No full textAn experimental and numerical investigation about exterior reinforced beam-column joints made with recycled concrete, and subject to horizontal reversed cyclic loading, is shown in this paper. Three real scale RC joints were casted with electric arc furnace slag as recycled coarse aggregate, and then tested under quasi-static cyclic loading, to study the influence of this kind of “green concrete” on the global behavior of the specimens. Particularly, ultimate load, hysteresis response and dissipated energy were analyzed. The joints exhibited the same failure mode, which involved the shear failure of panel joint and yielding of beam steel longitudinal bars: this kind of failure is indeed the most influenced by concrete properties. Then a numerical investigation was carried out, consisting of three- dimensional nonlinear finite element (FE) models, which were validated with the experimental results. Lastly, a parametric study was carried out to understand the effects of column axial load, beam longitudinal reinforcement bar amount and column transverse reinforcement ratio. Results indicate that, in all the analyzed cases, the seismic performance of the joints made with EAF slag concrete at least comparable than with conventional material
Experimental and numerical investigation on the cyclic behavior of RC beam column joints with EAF slag concrete
No full textAn experimental and numerical study about exterior reinforced beam-column joints made with recycled concrete containing Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) slag aggregate, and subject to horizontal reversed cyclic loading, is shown in this paper. Three real scale joints were tested under quasi-static cyclic loading, to study the influence of EAF concrete use on the global behavior of the specimens, in terms of ultimate load, hysteresis response and dissipated energy. The joints exhibited the same failure mode, which involved the shear failure of panel joint and yielding of beam steel longitudinal bars. Then a numerical investigation was carried out, consisting of three-dimensional non-linear finite-element (FE) models, which were validated with the experimental results. Lastly, a parametric study was carried out to understand the effects of column axial load, beam longitudinal reinforcement bar amount and column transverse reinforcement ratio. Results indicate that, in all the analyzed cases, the seismic performance of the joints made with EAF slag concrete is better than with conventional material
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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