Title:
Is Building Construction Approaching the Threshold of Becoming Unsustainable: A Systems Theoretic Exploration towards a Post-Forrester Model for Taming Unsustainable Exponentialoids

dc.contributor.advisor Thomas, Linda
dc.contributor.advisor Augenbroe, Godfried
dc.contributor.author Fernandez-Solis, Jose Luciano en_US
dc.contributor.committeeMember Bowen, Brian
dc.contributor.committeeMember Koskela, Lauir
dc.contributor.committeeMember Galloway, Thomas L.
dc.contributor.department Building Construction en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2007-03-27T18:26:47Z
dc.date.available 2007-03-27T18:26:47Z
dc.date.issued 2006-11-15 en_US
dc.description.abstract The construction industry is a major emissions contributor and a main resource consumer. Because of this, the industry is formulating short and long-term 'sustainability targets'. The trend points towards an unsustainable future, within the next 75 years, due to actual and projected increases in resource consumption and emissions generation in response to global population growth, and improving living standards, affluence. There are no reliable studies that predict whether the required reductions in ecological impacts can actually be realized, and if so, on what time scale. In fact, currently no available system representations of the industry can serve as the basis for studying long-term sustainability through the twenty-first Century. Hard dynamic systems, based on reductionism, are no longer adequate representations to study the dynamics of complex systems. A worldview that includes complexity requires foremost a philosophical induction (a theory) of the nature of all the forces that move the industry and a mechanism for understanding how complex forces aggregate and affect growth. The dissertation examines the current understanding of the Theories of Complexity in general, and in building construction, as preparation for a deeper understanding on how sustainability and its opposite, exponential growth (or "exponentialoid") relate. Guaranteeing sustainability transcends the current arsenal of counter measures such as LEED, high-performance measures, waste containment, conservation, lessening demand, renewable resourcing, greening of the industry, creation of high-performance buildings, penalizing the polluter, carbon trading, and others… Sustainability is re-framed as the (artificial) force that tames an unsustainable exponentialoid. Sustainable forces are represented by elements of influence acting like vectorials that appear to have identifiable origin, direction and magnitude. A hypothetical example of how the heuristic/theory works is presented, pending future studies (needed to supply the necessary data required for a working model). This is pre-paradigmatic work, using both a novel worldview and method of analysis that points to increasingly detailed research work to be performed in the future.
dc.description.degree Ph.D. en_US
dc.format.extent 2249167 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1853/14127
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher Georgia Institute of Technology en_US
dc.subject Post-Forrester en_US
dc.subject Resource consumption en_US
dc.subject Emissions en_US
dc.subject Exponentialoid en_US
dc.subject Exponential en_US
dc.subject Sustainability en_US
dc.subject Building construction en_US
dc.title Is Building Construction Approaching the Threshold of Becoming Unsustainable: A Systems Theoretic Exploration towards a Post-Forrester Model for Taming Unsustainable Exponentialoids en_US
dc.type Text
dc.type.genre Dissertation
dspace.entity.type Publication
local.contributor.advisor Augenbroe, Godfried
local.contributor.corporatename College of Design
local.contributor.corporatename School of Building Construction
local.relation.ispartofseries Doctor of Philosophy with a Major in Building Construction
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relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication c997b6a0-7e87-4a6f-b6fc-932d776ba8d0
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