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Modular construction is an innovative new construction method that minimizes waste and improves efficiency within the construction industry. However, practitioners are hampered by the lack of environmental and economic sustainability analysis methods in this area. This study analyzes the embodied carbon emissions and direct construction costs incurred during the production phase of a modular residential building and provides comparison to an equivalent conventional residential building. Major drawings and design details for a modular residential building in South Korea were obtained, and the quantity take-off data for the major construction materials were analyzed for a modular construction method and a conventional construction method using a reinforced concrete structure under the same conditions. Focusing on major construction materials during the production phase, the embodied carbon emissions assessment revealed that adopting a modular construction approach reduced the environmental impact by approximately 36%, as compared to the conventional reinforced concrete method. However, in terms of the direct construction cost, the modular construction was approximately 8% more expensive than the conventional reinforced concrete construction method.

This study employs probabilistic analysis to evaluate the life cycle embodied environmental cost of Korean apartment buildings, with a focus on six major construction materials. To this end, the bill of materials was analyzed for 443 Korean apartment buildings according to the type and plan form, and probability density functions (PDFs) were established for the input quantities of the six materials under consideration. Life cycle scenarios were then examined for each material, and their respective life cycle embodied environmental cost factors were established, using a monetary valuation-based damage cost life cycle analysis model. The estimated environmental costs were evaluated by apartment structural type and plan form, based on probability distributions using the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). Building life cycle embodied environmental cost was estimated between 16.87 USD/m2 and 23.03 USD/m2 (90% confidence interval). Among the structure types analyzed, the highest costs were associated with the wall structure, followed by rigid frame and flat plate structures; at the plan form level, costs followed the sequence plate-type > mixed-type > tower type for a given type of structure.

This study aimed to analyze the major building materials in terms of environmental impact evaluation of school buildings in South Korea. Three existing school buildings were selected as the analysis targets, and building materials were analyzed in terms of cumulative weight and six environmental impact categories (global warming potential, abiotic depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone-layer depletion potential, and photochemical oxidation potential). The materials were analyzed from an environmental perspective after integrating the six environmental impact categories into the environmental costs. From the analysis, nine major building materials, including ready-mixed concrete, concrete bricks, aggregate, rebar, cement, stone, glass, insulating materials, and wood, were selected for the school buildings. These analysis results can be used as a streamlined evaluation of the environmental impacts of school buildings. It is thought that the simplified life cycle assessment will help make decisions considering environmental characteristics in the early stage of the construction project. Additionally, it will be possible to make LCA efficient in terms of time and cost, one of the largest constraints of the existing building LCA, and effective reduction in the environmental load.

Because the reduction in environmental impacts (EIs) of buildings using life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been emphasized as a practical strategy for the sustainable development of the construction industry, studies are required to analyze not only the operational environmental impacts (OEIs) of buildings, but also the embodied environmental impacts (EEIs) of building materials. This study aims to analyze the EEIs of Korean apartment buildings on the basis of major building materials as part of research with the goal of reducing the EIs of buildings. For this purpose, six types of building materials (ready-mixed concrete, reinforcement steel, concrete bricks, glass, insulation, and gypsum) for apartment buildings were selected as major building materials, and their inputs per unit area according to the structure types and plans of apartment buildings were derived by analyzing the design and bills of materials of 443 apartment buildings constructed in South Korea. In addition, a life-cycle scenario including the production, construction, maintenance, and end-of-life stage was constructed for each major building material. The EEIs of the apartment buildings were quantitatively assessed by applying the life-cycle inventory database (LCI DB) and the Korean life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method based on damage-oriented modeling (KOLID), and the results were analyzed.

Background Major incidents evolving from occupational accidents are very infrequent in Scandinavia and therefore, case reports are called for. On 26 November, 2024, a fatal occupational accident took place during the construction of a concrete silo in the small rural town of Flemløse (population 574), Denmark. Three people died and six were injured as the result of a collapsing concrete roof during construction. We aim to describe the incident response by the emergency medical services (EMS), to identify areas of improvement, and to evaluate the adherence to current national major incident guidelines and communication grids. Case presentation The initial call to the emergency medical dispatch center described an accident comprising fifteen injured persons, all of whom were migrant workers. Seventeen EMS units including two helicopter EMS units were dispatched to scene. Three critically injured patients were admitted to a nearby trauma center, whereas three lightly injured were taken to a regional trauma hospital. The initial reports overestimated the number of possible casualties and therefore, the available resources were ample. The very construction of the silo resulted in challenging conditions for evacuation of the injured patients. Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) aspects of the incident added to the inherent complexity in major incident management. Although potentially detrimental to the patients, the prolonged extrication of the patients enabled the prehospital services to procure a timely organization of the incident site according to guidelines and an organized transport prioritization of the victims. The communication within EMS and between authorities was generally as per national guideline. Conclusions The EMS response to this major incident generally adhered to the national guidelines and, furthermore, the communication within and between authorities was established according to guidelines. Important findings included the use of local resources by the incident command and improvised means for the evacuation of victims from a highly hostile environment. The triage of patients adhered to local and national major incident guidelines. Migrant workers have increased risk for occupational accidents.

Construction projects are associated with risks, which influence projects’ performance and quality. To ensure the on-time completion of construction projects, project managers often use risk assessment and management methods to reduce risks in the project life cycle. Identifying risk factors and the relationship between major risk factors and the quality of construction projects facilitates construction management. In this study, 948 project records of construction inspection from 1993 to 2020 were collected from the Public Construction Management Information System (PCMIS) of the Taiwan central government to conduct an expert survey to identify five risk dimensions and 19 major risk factors associated with Taiwanese construction projects. The hybrid analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and an artificial neural network (ANN) were employed to develop a model for predicting major risk factors and construction quality. The AHP was used to calculate the weight of major risk factors to verify their influence on construction. The ANN was adopted to extract the features of major risk factors to predict the quality of a construction project. The accuracy of the prediction model was 85%. The project managers can reference the prediction results obtained with the proposed method to perform effective risk management and devise decision-making strategies for construction management.

To address the environmental problems associated with construction materials, the construction industry has made considerable efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, construction materials cause several other environmental problems in addition to carbon emissions and thus, a comprehensive analysis of environmental impact categories is required. This study aims to determine the major environmental impact categories for each construction material in production stage using the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique on road projects. Through the review of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies, the abiotic depletion potential (ADP), ozone depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, eco-toxicity potential, human toxicity potential, as well as the global warming potential (GWP) were defined as impact categories. To define the impact categories for road construction materials, major environmental pollutants were analyzed for a number of road projects, and impact categories for 13 major construction materials were selected as mandatory impact categories. These materials contributed more than 80% to the impact categories from an LCA perspective. The impact categories to which each material contributed more than 99% were proposed as specialization impact categories to provide basic data for use in the LCIA of future road projects.

The lining material is a key element of bird nests, serving primarily as insulation for the adult, eggs, and/or chicks, but collection of such material has an energetic cost. Our study investigated the nest-building effort of four species of tit (Paridae) in an English wood by quantifying the use of colored wool-like artificial material in nest lining from 2000 to 2010. We recorded the distances that birds carried the material from source to nest for each nest as an indirect measure of the energetic cost of collecting nest material to individual birds. Birds did not always use nest material from the nearest source to their nest, and some birds collected material from two, three or four well-separated sources. There was no detectable color preference in choice of material, and few birds traveled more than 200 m to gather the material. Use of the material appeared to depend on the species. Within defined areas around material dispensers not all individual Great Tits (Parus major) used the artificial material, and, for all species examined, the proportion of birds using the material declined with increasing distance between source and nest. Use of artificial material suggested that selection of nest materials was probably opportunistic but also reflected the preference of these species for a wool-like nest lining.

The modernization of human civilization has led to the prospect of better and more durable building materials. Marble, found in various colors and textures, has been used as a building stone for centuries, either as cut stone or polished stone. The present study evaluated the petrological, geochemical, and geotechnical characterizations of the Gahirat Marble formation as a building stone. It is exposed over an area of 160 square kilometers in southwestern Chitral. The Gahirat Marble formation has been divided into two parts, i.e., the eastern and western parts. The eastern part is a coarse crystalline rock that exhibits a granulose structure and was subjected to amphibolite facies metamorphism, whereas its western part is a coarse-to-medium crystalline rock that displays a differential granulose structure and was subjected to green schist facies metamorphism. Petrographically, it is composed mainly of calcite (>92%) with minute quartz, chlorite, muscovite, biotite, garnet, and opaque minerals. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) technique was used to analyze the chemical composition of the Gahirat Marble showing that it is a pure calciocarbonate marble (CaO: 53.16–55.02 wt.%). The specific gravity measured varies from 2.46–2.71 gm/cm3, water absorption is <0.2%, sulfate soundness is <0.65, and due to its unconfined compressive strength, it is classified as strong rock, thus conforming to ASTM C503 specifications. The results acquired from the investigated samples suggest they are suitable as dimension stones. Until now, it has been limitedly mined and marketed but can be further exploited for export trade, based upon its petrographic, geotechnical, and geochemical characterization.

Background The biomedical field has used gold nanorods (GNRs) for decades; however, clinical trials and translation is limited except gold nanoshells. The preparation of gold nanoshells is more complex than that of polyethylene glycol-modified GNRs (PEG-GNRs), and it is difficult to ensure uniform thickness. It is important to encourage and broaden the use of the star member (PEG-GNRs) of gold nanoparticles family for clinical translation. Existing studies on PEG-GNRs are limited with no relevant systematic progression in non-human primates. Herein, we assessed the systematic biocompatibility of PEG-GNRs in rats and clinically relevant Macaca fascicularis . Results In this small animal study, we administrated multiple doses of PEG-GNRs to rats and observed good biocompatibility. In the non-human primate study, PEG-GNRs had a longer blood half-life and produced a negligible immune response. Histological analysis revealed no significant abnormality. Conclusions PEG-GNRs were well-tolerated with good biocompatibility in both small animals and large non-human primates. The information gained from the comprehensive systemic toxicity assessment of PEG-GNRs in M. fascicularis will be helpful for translation to clinical trials. Graphical abstract