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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Assessing Potential Environmental Impacts According To Probable Patterns Of Switchgrass Adoption In The Southeastern Us, Benjamin Sharp
Assessing Potential Environmental Impacts According To Probable Patterns Of Switchgrass Adoption In The Southeastern Us, Benjamin Sharp
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To assess the overall net impact of an emerging technology, life cycle assessment (LCA) must be accompanied by projections of adoption. Diffusion of innovation research provides tools that incorporate economic and social variables to explain and forecast integration of technologies. A switchgrass-to-ethanol case study for the southeastern U.S. is used to demonstrate methods for gauging aggregate environmental effects of an emerging energy technology. Before applying diffusion concepts, breakeven capacities are calculated for land in row crops, hay, pasture and marginal land. Breakeven curves are generated to provide upper bounds to switchgrass adoption over a range of farm-gate prices. The amount …
Incorporating Natural Hazard Resistance Into The Life Cycle Assessment Framework, Jeffery Plumblee
Incorporating Natural Hazard Resistance Into The Life Cycle Assessment Framework, Jeffery Plumblee
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Hazard resistant building materials are not adequately represented by current LCA approaches, which do not account for environmental benefits of the avoided losses (e.g. avoided waste, avoided materials for repairs) promised by hazard resistant materials. The goal of this study was to encourage a more complete understanding of materials' environmental impacts by developing a framework to include hazard related damages in LCA.
Catastrophe modeling is a well-developed tool used by the insurance industry to assess the probability of hazard and quantify related impacts. These models were studied to identify required input data as well as the format of output results. …