In the U.S., construction and demolition debris predominantly end up in landfills with minimal reuse and recycling scenarios. This leads to large environmental impacts and lost opportunities for material recovery.
As a result, there is a significant need for documented end-of-life (EOL) Re-X (reuse, recycling) scenarios and EOL data, including emissions data, to encourage widespread use of Re-X strategies in building design.
This webinar outlines the efforts of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Carbon Leadership Forum, Building Transparency, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to create an open-access database of greenhouse gas emissions associated with various end-of-life (EOL) scenarios for a select list of building materials. It also includes information on how to integrate the database with CAD/BIM/LCA tools for evaluating various EOL scenarios.
Guest Speakers
Dr. Naveen Kumar Muthumanickam is a research engineer at NREL, specializing in the development of industrialized and robotic construction technologies to help achieve the decarbonization and clean energy goals of the construction sector at scale and speed. Dr. Naveen’s received his doctoral degree specializing in developing a machine learning based framework to optimize buildings for multiple objectives including embodied energy, operational energy, daylighting, cost, and robotic constructability, which was subsequently used by the Penn State team to 3D print a large-scale concrete habitat at the finals of the NASA 3D Printed Mars Habitat Centennial Prize Challenge. Additionally, he holds an MS in architectural science and building technology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from India. Complementing his academic progression, Naveen has held multiple internships and full-time appointments at notable construction technology firms such as Autodesk Inc., Higharc Inc. and several other design and construction firms. Naveen has presented his works on building optimization and robotic construction at various agencies like American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE), NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and other technical conferences.