1,720,956 research outputs found
Life cycle environmental benefits of a forward-thinking design phase for buildings: the case study of a temporary pavilion built for an international exhibition
No full textThe life cycle of a pavilion built for an international exhibition was investigated to understand the role that the design phase may play in the environmental sustainability of buildings. The limited life span of the structure allowed for a complete life cycle assessment (LCA) based on primary data to be undertaken, including the end of the first life. A methodology that considered an extension of the service life was applied to estimate the environmental impacts of distinct end-of-life scenarios. Results confirmed the paramount importance of the design phase in improving the life cycle sustainability of buildings. Accurate selection of materials allowed to markedly reduce the impact of the product stage (e.g. 37% fewer greenhouse gas emissions). Design for disassembly proved to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition to minimise the end-of-life impacts: design phase should not be limited to the appropriate selection of materials and components’ connections but must also foresee a second use for the structure or the materials at the end of the first life. Forecasting an after-life for the structure could reduce the life cycle burden up to 40% for several environmental impact categories. Conversely, if the second use is not predefined, the economic cost in the dismantling operation could become the priority rather than the salvaging of the components. Results of the present study may be used by future (temporary) building designers to improve the sustainability of their structure and to avoid the errors identified in the present case
THE ENVIRONMENTAL RELEVANCE OF THE CONST RUCTION AND END-OFLIFE PHASES OF A BUILDING: A TEMPORARY STRUCTURE LCA CASE STUDY
Get PDFLCA can prevent shifting the environmental burden of a building to peculiar life cycle phases. Components production and demolition stages became much more relevant in new low-energy buildings. The same applies also to temporary structures, whose useful service life is generally limited to the duration of the related event. More attention must therefore be paid to the choice of the construction materials and the way they are assembled in order to reduce resource depletion, embodied energy and waste production. To achieve this goal, it is essential to act in the design phase of the building in order to include environmental problems in the early stages of the decision making process. The objective of our study is to assess the environmental impacts of the different life stages of a temporary structure to support the design phase of future ones. The reference case study is the Brazilian pavilion constructed in Milan (Italy) for EXPO 2015. The aim of the research is to evaluate how much the design phase of the building, the choice of the materials and the end-of-life scenarios can influence the environmental performances of the structure. Primary data for the whole lifecycle are considered and a sensitivity analysis on the materials sustainability is performed. LCA results confirm the importance of the design phase for temporary structures. The predilection of natural and recycled materials in the construction phase and the prevision of a second life significantly reduce the impacts of the building. Among the end-of-life scenarios the best environmental solution proves to be the refunctionalization on site. The priority must be therefore to foresee a second life of the components at an early stage of the decisionmaking process. Similar conclusions could be expected for low-energy buildings too
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
LCA di strutture temporanee : il caso di studio del Padiglione Brasile per Expo Milano 2015
No full textLAUREA MAGISTRAL
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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