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Learning and Assessment Plan (LAP)
Australian Standard
AS ISO 14040 Environmental management - Life Cycle Assessment - Principals and Framework
This International Standard describes the principles and framework for life cycle assessment (LCA) including
a) the goal and scope definition of the LCA,
b) the life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) phase,
c) the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase,
d) the life cycle interpretation phase,
e) reporting and critical review of the LCA,
f) limitations of the LCA,
g) relationship between the LCA phases, and
h) conditions for use of value choices and optional elements.
FAQ O'Reilly eBook database
eBooks
Handbook of Environmental Engineering. (2018)
Handbook of Environmental Engineering offers a comprehensive guide to environmental engineers who desire to contribute to mitigating problems, such as flooding, caused by extreme weather events, protecting populations in coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels, reducing illnesses caused by polluted air, soil, and water from improperly regulated industrial and transportation activities, promoting the safety of the food supply.
Integrating Sustainability Into Major Projects (2020)
It offers extensive guidance for integrating sustainability into project design, planning and delivery. In each chapter, the authors provide invaluable sustainability management strategies and sample tools for project execution plans, engineering decision-making, stakeholder engagement tracking, logging commitments and follow-up actions, permit tracking, and construction management.
Practical sustainability strategies: How to gain a competitive advantage. Second Edition (2020)
O'Reilly eBook:
This book looks at the circular economy, the sharing economy, adaptation, resiliency, and strategies to fight climate change. This new edition also highlights the UN Sustainable Development Goals that have been adopted worldwide. This updated second edition:
• Covers new strategies, measuring systems, GRI, STARS and B-Lab certifications.
• Offers teaching slides and questions for use in the classroom.
• Explores the principles and importance of sustainability.
• Examines more than 10 different sustainability strategies.
• Presents the economic justification for sustainability with illustrative examples.
Sustainable coastal management and climate adaptation: global lesson from regional approaches in Australia
Proquest eBook:
Explores the evolution of coastal management, and provides insights into coastal management in Australia.
Sustainable construction: from structural design to interior fit-out : Assessing and improving the environmental impact of buildings. (2015)
Proquest eBook
The book offers a thorough guide to ecological building design and sustainable construction methods. The authors provide an overview of the most relevant databases and certification standards for building products and illustrate how a Life Cycle Analysis is conducted. They identify key ways of optimising the planning process in line with ecological criteria, while offering advice for the selection of building materials and elements.
Sustainable environmental engineering. First Edition (2019)
O'Reilly eBook:
Sustainable Environmental Engineering (SEE) is to research, design, and build Environmental Engineering Infrastructure System (EEIS) in harmony with nature using life cycle cost analysis and benefit analysis and life cycle assessment and to protect human health and environments at minimal cost. The foundations of the SEE are the twelve design principles (TDPs) with three specific rules for each principle.
Six design hierarchies are prevention, recovery, separation, treatment, remediation, and optimization.
Six dimensions are integrated system, material economy, reliability on spatial scale, resiliency on temporal scale, and cost effectiveness. In addition, the authors, two experts in the field, introduce major computer packages that are useful to solve real environmental engineering design problems.
Sustainability: Fundamentals and applications (2020)
The book covers applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, as well as carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects.
A water story : learning from the past, planning for the future. (2020)
Proquest eBook:
A comprehensive and engaging account of water use in Australia, from Ancient Australia to today. Freshwater scarcity is a critical challenge, with social, economic, political and environmental consequences.
Images
Life Cycle Assessment: finding the best approach for your company
Realizing compliance – without overspending
LCA is a scientific method for assessing the environmental impact of a product or service associated with a product’s cradle-to-grave lifecycle. EU regulations, international (green marketing) standards and market demand are increasingly urging manufacturers to provide greater transparency on the composition and environmental performance of their products.
The potential danger of this is the proliferation of certified LCA schemes such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPD’s) as a means in itself, imposing excessive costs to companies.
Journal articles
Core concepts and challenges in sustainable engineering education in Australia (2018)
Sustainable engineering (SE) is an important area within Australian engineering degrees that requires increasing attention. The engineering management and challenges to be faced by modern engineering students will be very different to those faced over the past 30-40 years, suggesting that increased attention needs to be place on both the content being delivered and the pedagogy chosen to deliver impactful and effective sustainable engineering education. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to examine the main sustainability concepts being covered in engineering education and the challenges faced in delivering sustainability education in engineering degrees currently.
Environmental impacts of climate change adaption of road pavements and mitigation options. (2017)
Roads contribute to climate change, mainly due to traffic emissions, but they are also affected by changes
in the climate. Climate variations modify pavements’ exposure in a positive or negative way, reducing or
increasing degradation. When climate impacts are negative, it is necessary to apply adaptation measures,
such as changes in design or maintenance frequency, or traffic management. These adaptation measures
may have new environmental impacts, especially an increased use of energy and emissions or acoustic
impacts, which require mitigation measures.
Environmental sustainability assessment of hydropower plant in Europe using life cycle assessment. (2017)
This paper highlight the life-cycle environmental impact assessment of the reservoir based hydropower generation system located in alpine and non-alpine region of Europe, addressing their ecological effects by the ReCiPe and CML methods under several impact-assessment categories such as human health, ecosystems, global warming potential, acidification potential, etc. The Australasian life-cycle inventory database and SimaPro software are utilized to accumulate life-cycle inventory dataset and to evaluate the impacts.
A harmonized method for automatable life cycle. (2020) sustainability performance assessment and comparison of civil engineering works design concepts.
The life cycle sustainability performance of civil engineering works is increasingly important. The possibility to influence the sustainability of a project design is larger in the conceptual stage than in later stages. Better-informed decisions regarding design choices' impact on sustainability can be made by comparing conceptual project designs based on an assessment of their life cycle sustainability performance. It is essential that concepts are assessed in a harmonized way and compared impartially.
Improving the triple bottom line through compressed air leak detection and remediation ; Preventative leak detection measures play a vital role in the sustainability in manufacturing environments. (2021)
Compressed air is one of the most expensive
and essential utilities to many industries.
Often, it costs more than does many of the
uses of electricity, natural gas or water in
maintaining and operating a plant.
Net zero adaptation - a review of built environment sustainability assessment tools. (2021)
By way of example, a review of three established, geographically diverse building sustainability assessment tools (BREEAM, Green Star and LEED) demonstrates the extent that adaptation to climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions have been integrated. Despite recent assessment updates, emphasis on action pertaining to climate issues is heavily weighted towards mitigation; the integration of adaptation considerations is limited and in most cases not mandatory. This state of play in assessment tools is reflective of wider shortfalls in meaningfully addressing climate change risk in asset design.
Sustainable water management under future uncertainty with eco-engineering decisions scaling.
Integrated water resources management for both human economic needs and ecosystem health is increasingly recognized as essential to societal well-being20,75. However, progress towards more sustain
able forms of water management is hampered by conflicting inter
ests, existing economic policies, inflexible infrastructure design and a lack of quantitative, transparent tools to facilitate critical decision-making. Debates around the construction of water infrastructure are long-
Technology and sustainability: when lean and greeen converge: if recent experience teaches us anything, it is that what sustains the supply chain also benefits the environment. (2012)
Every supply chain seeks to develop the capability to track shipments from creation through sale. And on the sustainability side, those that were able have invested in shiny new fleets of fuel-efficient vehicles (or contracted carriers who had made that commitment). At the very least, companies initiated new processes to reduce the amount of resources that went into each delivery.
Tools and Concepts for Environmental Sustainability in the Food-Energy-Water Nexus: Chemical Engineering Perspective. (2017) - Case Study
EBSCO
This work primarily deals with environmental sustainability and/or sustainable development, and with methodologies to design or redesign sustainable chemical and allied processes and products using sustainability concepts and LCA thinking.
Web Sites
Australian National Life Cycle Inventory Database
Requires free registration. A national, publicly-accessible database with easy access to authoritative, comprehensive and transparent environmental information on a wide range of Australian products and services over their entire life cycle.
Australia State of the Environment 2021
Combining scientific, traditional and local knowledge, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have worked together to create this first holistic assessment of the state of Australia’s environment.
Carbon Cycle - University of California Museum of Paleontology
Carbon cycles through the atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere via processes that include photosynthesis, fire, the burning of fossil fuels, weathering, and volcanism. By understanding how human activities have altered the carbon cycle, we can explain many of the climate and ecosystem changes we are experiencing today, and why this rapid rate of change is largely unprecedented in the Earth’s history.
Carbon Cycle diagram - UCAR - University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
This fairly basic carbon cycle diagram shows how carbon atoms 'flow' between various 'reservoirs' in the Earth system. This depiction of the carbon cycle focusses on the terrestrial (land-based) part of the cycle; there are also exchanges with the ocean which are only hinted at here. Note that carbon atoms are incorporated into various molecules as they flow around the cycle; for example, photosynthesis in plants captures carbon atoms in sugar molecules and atmospheric carbon is contained in molecules such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Conservation - World Book Advanced [Encyclopaedia]
Conservation is the management, protection, and wise use of natural resources by humans. Natural resources include all the things that help support life, such as sunlight, water, soil, and minerals. Plants and animals are also natural resources.
CSIRO - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
As one of the world's largest mission-driven multidisciplinary science and research organisations, we are focusing on the issues that matter the most: for our quality of life, for the economy and for our environment.
Ecosystem - World Book Advanced [Encyclopaedia]
World Book Encyclopedia definition of ecosystem
Engineers Australia
Engineers Australia is the trusted voice of the profession. We are the global home for engineering professionals renowned as leaders in shaping a sustainable world.
Hotspots of biodiversity or homogeneous landscapes? Farm dams as biodiversity reserves in Australia
Proquest journal article
In many countries the ubiquitous farm dam or pond is an integral component of agricultural landscapes. In Australia there are in excess of half a million farm ponds, used largely for irrigation or for watering stock. In contrast to Europe, these wetlands are being decommissioned in response to the introduction of government policy that regulates water usage from these dams.
How does the ocean affect climate and weather on land - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration U.S. Dept. Of Commerce?
One way that the world’s ocean affects weather and climate is by playing an important role in keeping our planet warm. The majority of radiation from the sun is absorbed by the ocean, particularly in tropical waters around the equator, where the ocean acts like a massive, heat-retaining solar panel. Land areas also absorb some sunlight, and the atmosphere helps to retain heat that would otherwise quickly radiate into space after sunset.
The importance of estimating stock and domestic water use in the context of a water constrained future: Lessons from the Woori Yallock catchment, Victoria
This project aimed to estimate the use of stock and domestic water in the Woori Yallock catchment from waterways, groundwater and dams. The project gathered data that will improve the confidence of hydrological modelling underpinning stream fl ow management planning in and around Melbourne.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - World Book Advanced [Encyclopaedia]
Scientists worried about the relationship between human activities and the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere. They thus contribute to a rise in average temperatures around the planet.
State of the Climate 2020 - Oceans - Sea surface temperature - Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
The increasing frequency of marine heatwaves around Australia in recent years has caused permanent impacts on marine ecosystem health, marine habitats and species.
Video
Environmental Issues and Human Impact
This video looks at urgent environmental concerns facing planet Earth and what people can do to repair the degradation humans have caused. Air and water pollution, the effects of pollution on health and the environment, deforestation and loss of wetlands, ozone depletion and global warming, and the negative impact of agriculture, construction, and recreation/tourism are discussed.
