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MOOC
How can we strengthen sustainability? By empowering individuals and communities to transform and balance dynamic natural resources, economic prosperity, and healthy populations. In this course, you’ll explore productive and disruptive social, ecological, and economic intersections – the “triple bottom line.” You’ll investigate a spectrum of global, national, regional, municipal and personal relationships that are increasing resiliency. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to effectively locate your interests, and to leverage optimistic change within emerging 21st century urban environments. This course will describe fundamental paradigm shifts that are shaping sustainability. These include connectivity, diversity, citizen engagement, collaboration source tracing, mapping, transportation, and integrative, regenerative design. We will take examples from cities around the globe; making particular use of the complex evolution of site-specific conditions within the Connecticut River watershed. In addition we will present tools and strategies that can be utilized by individuals, communities, and corporations to orchestrate effective and collective change. Each week, lessons will highlight the significance of clean water as a key indication of ecosystem, community and human health. Learners will be asked to investigate and share information about their local environment. Finally, we will note the impact of such disruptive forces as industrial pollution, changing governance, privatization of public services, mining of natural resources, public awareness, and climate change. A fundamental course goal will be to characterize indicators of economic prosperity and happiness that relate to environmental sustainability – and the capacity of individuals to create change.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Urban ecology (Sociology) Sustainable development
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Meeting growing global energy demand, while mitigating climate change and environmental impacts, requires a large-scale transition to clean, sustainable energy systems. Students and professionals around the world must prepare for careers in this future energy landscape, gaining relevant skills and knowledge to expedite the transformation in industry, government and nongovernmental organizations, academia, and nonprofits. The building sector represents a large percentage of overall energy consumption, and contributes 40% of the carbon emissions driving climate change. Yet buildings also offer opportunities for substantial, economical energy efficiency gains. From retrofit projects to new construction, buildings require a context-specific design process that integrates efficiency strategies and technologies. In this course, you'll be introduced to a range of technologies and analysis techniques for designing comfortable, resource-efficient buildings. The primary focus of this course is the study of the thermal and luminous behavior of buildings. You'll examine the basic scientific principles underlying these phenomena, and use computer-aided design software and climate data to explore the role light and energy can play in shaping architecture. These efficiency design elements are critical to the larger challenge of producing energy for a growing population while reducing carbon emissions.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Buildings -- Energy conservation Sustainable architecture Sustainable buildings -- Design construction
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Too often modern cities and suburbs are disorganized places where most new development makes daily life less pleasant, creates more traffic congestion, and contributes to climate change. This trend has to change; and our course is going to show you how. Ecodesign means integrating planning, urban design and the conservation of natural systems to produce a sustainable built and natural environment. Ecodesign can be implemented through normal business practices and the kinds of capital programs and regulations already in use in most communities. We will show you how ecodesign has already been used for exceptional projects in many cities and suburbs—from Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm to False Creek North in Vancouver to Battery Park City in Manhattan, as well as many smaller-scale examples that can be adopted in any community. Cities and suburbs built according to ecodesign principles can and should become normal, instead of just a few special examples, transforming urban development into desirable, lower-carbon, compact and walkable communities and business centers. As this course describes specific solutions to the vexing urban challenges we all face, course participants can see how these ideas might be applied in their own area. Participants will learn the conceptual framework of ecodesign, see many real, successful examples, and come to understand the tools, processes, and techniques for policy development and implementation. Ecodesign thinking is relevant to anyone who has a part in shaping or influencing the future of cities and suburbs – citizens, students, designers, public officials, and politicians. At the conclusion of the course participants will have the tools and strategies necessary to advocate policies and projects for a neighbourhood or urban district using the ecodesign framework.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Cities towns -- Growth City planning -- Environmental aspects Regional planning
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Cities are built site by site. Site planning has been taught in urban planning, landscape architecture and architecture programs for over a century and continues to be a foundation course for those who aspire to plan the built environment. It is a required subject on licensing and certification programs for each of these disciplines. Mastering the art of site planning requires substantive knowledge, well-honed design skills, and familiarity with examples and prototypes of site organization. This course provides the perspectives of leading academics and practitioners on the important issues in preparing site plans. It offers a foundation of knowledge, and the opportunity to apply what is learned in preparing a site plan.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Building sites -- Planning
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Humanity faces an immense challenge: providing abundant energy to everyone without wrecking the planet. If we want a high-energy future while protecting the natural world for our children, we must consider the environmental consequences of energy production and use. But money matters too: energy solutions that ignore economic costs are not realistic, particularly in a world where billions of people currently can’t afford access to basic energy services. How can we proceed? Energy Within Environmental Constraints won’t give you the answer. Instead, we will teach you how to ask the right questions and estimate the consequences of different choices. This course is rich in details of real devices and light on theory. You won’t find any electrodynamics here, but you will find enough about modern commercial solar panels to estimate if they would be profitable to install in a given location. We emphasizes costs: the cascade of capital and operating costs from energy extraction all the way through end uses. We also emphasize quantitative comparisons and tradeoffs: how much more expensive is electricity from solar panels than from coal plants, and how much pollution does it prevent? Is solar power as cost-effective an environmental investment as nuclear power or energy efficiency? And how do we include considerations other than cost? This course is intended for a diverse audience. Whether you are a student, an activist, a policymaker, a business owner, or a concerned citizen, this course will help you start to think carefully about our current energy system and how we can improve its environmental performance.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Environmental protection Environmental management Renewable energy sources Power resources
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Wind turbines and solar panels are likely to play a critical role in achieving a low-carbon power sector that helps address climate change and local pollution, resulting from fossil fuel power generation. Because wind and solar power output is weather-dependent, it is variable in nature and somewhat more uncertain than output from conventional fossil fuel generators. It is therefore important to consider how to manage high penetrations of solar and wind so as to maintain electricity system reliability. This introductory course, delivered by Ieading academics from Imperial College London, with technical input and contributions from the National Energy Renewable Lab (Golden, Colorado), will discuss what challenges variable output renewables pose to the achievability of a reliable, stable electricity system, how these challenges can be addressed and at what costs. Its overall objective is to demonstrate that there is already a range of established technologies, policies and operating procedures to achieve a flexible, stable, reliable electricity system with a high penetration of renewables such as wind and solar. The course uses a variety of country and context-specific examples to demonstrate the concepts. Policy makers, regulators, grid operators and investors in renewable electricity will benefit from a solid understanding of these considerations, thereby helping them drive forward the development of a fit-for-purpose clean power system in their own regional context.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering and Building Services Engineering
- Keywords:
- Electric power production Renewable energy sources Electric power distribution
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
This course provides the tools needed to build a low-carbon power sector around the world. By diving into the perspective of different players in the power sector - from investors through to utilities, regulators and project developers - you will be able to choose the right strategies, policies and other levers needed to incentivise a cleaner power mix in your own context. This course explores the mix of approaches that can create a pro-renewables environment. It explores this from a policy, regulatory and supply-chain perspective and examines the incentives and rules available. Key policies are brought to life through case studies, learning from both success and failure. Key messages of the course include: - Ambitions for renewable electricity must be grounded in technical and financial feasibility - Pro-renewables environments recognise the needs of energy supply chain actors (e.g. project developers, utilities, regulators, electricity customers) and balances pricing, fiscal and financial and wider policies to incentivise and drive deployment - There are multiple ways to encourage deployment of renewables across different scales – these have strengths and weaknesses and must balance rate of deployment, affordability and efficiency of generation - Incentives and rules are a package and can be aligned to deliver affordable, efficient renewable electricity - several real-world examples demonstrate this - Different countries have succeeded and failed in creating pro-renewables environments – demonstrating that while lessons can be used from these experiences, there is no single route to success and the environment must be bespoke to the circumstances of the country. This course should help decision makers across the electricity supply chain, in both the public and private sector, understand what mix of incentives is ideal from their perspective.
- Subjects:
- Environmental Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Environmental Policy and Planning
- Keywords:
- Electric power distribution -- Environmental aspects Renewable energy sources
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
In the past few decades, China's cities have experienced a period of rapid development. Great changes have taken place in both urban space and urban life. With the booming of information and communications technology (ICT), ‘Big data’ such as mobile phone signaling, public transportation smart card records and ‘open data’ from commercial websites and government websites jointly promote the formation of the ‘new data environment’, thus providing a novel perspective for a better understanding of what changes have happened or are happening in China’s cities. This course combines both the new data generated for urban analysis and its research applications. The content ranges from big data acquisition, analysis, visualization and applications in the context of China’s urbanization and its city planning, to urban modeling methods and typical models, as well as the emerging trend and potential revolution of big data in urban planning. We have categorized the overall content of this online course into five sections, namely, overview, data, data processing, application, and perspective. The section of overview introduces cities in transition and describe the changing of urban space and urban life in China. The second section lists some commonly used open data and big data in the ‘new data environment’. Then, methods for data acquisition, cleaning and analysis are illustrated in data processing section. To better explain the data analysis method, the fourth part introduces several Chinese research cases to illustrate the application of these methods in urban research. Last but not least, the last section is the most future-oriented one, which is composed of some methodologies and proposals such as Data Augmented Design (DAD) and Big Model. This course, which shares experiences on big data analysis and its research application, will suit those concerning contemporary urbanizing China and its urban planning in the context of information and communication technologies.
- Subjects:
- Building Services Engineering and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- China Cities towns -- Data processing City planning Big data
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Cities are becoming the predominant living and working environment of humanity, and for this reason, livability or quality of life in the city has become crucial. This urban planning course will focus on four areas that directly affect livability in a city: Urban energy, urban climate, urban ecology and urban mobility. The course begins by presenting measurable criteria for the assessment of livability, and how to positively influence the design of cities towards greater livability. We will focus on this basic topic of the human habitat in a holistic way, and introduce possibilities of participatory urban design by citizens, leading towards the development of a citizen design science. You will be able to share your experiences with the other participants in the course and also with the experts from the teaching team. In completing this course, you will better understand how to make a city more livable by going beyond the physical appearance and by focusing on different properties and impact factors of the urban system. Livability in Future Cities is the second course in a series of MOOCs under the title “Future Cities.” This series aims to bring the latest research on planning, managing and transforming cities to places where this knowledge has the highest benefit for its citizens. “Future Cities” provided an overview, and this course will focus on livability in existing and new cities.
- Subjects:
- Building Services Engineering and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Smart cities Urban ecology (Sociology) Cities towns -- Effect of technological innovations on Quality of life City planning
- Resource Type:
- MOOC
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MOOC
Understanding a city as a whole, its people, components, functions, scales and dynamics, is crucial for the appropriate design and management of the urban system. While the development of cities in different parts of the world is moving in diverse directions, all estimations show that cities worldwide will change and grow strongly in the coming years. Especially in the tropics over the next 3 decades, it is expected that the number of new urban residents will increase by 3 times the population of Europe today. Yet already now, there is an extreme shortage of designers and urban planners able to understand the functioning of a city as a system, and to plan a sustainable and resilient city. To answer questions like: Which methods can contribute to the sustainable performance of a city, and how can we teach this to the next generations, the ETH Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore has produced over the last 3 years many necessary research results. “Future Cities” aims to bring these latest results to the places where they are needed most. The only way to better understand the city is by going beyond the physical appearance and by focusing on different representations, properties and impact factors of the urban system. For that reason, in this course we will explore the city as the most complex human-made “organism” with a metabolism that can be modeled in terms of stocks and flows. We will open a holistic view on existing and new cities, with a focus on Asia. Data-driven approaches for the development of the future city will be studied, based on crowdsourcing and sensing. At first, we will give an overview of the components and dynamics of the future cities, and we will show the importance of information and information architecture for the cities of the future. The course will cover the origins, state-of-the-art and applications of information architecture and simulation. “Future Cities” will provide the basis to understand, shape, plan, design, build, manage and continually adapt a city. You will learn to see the consequences of citizen science and the merging of Architecture and information space. You will be up-to-date on the latest research and development on how to better understand, create and manage the future cities for a more resilient urban world.
- Subjects:
- Building Services Engineering and Building and Real Estate
- Keywords:
- Smart cities Cities towns -- Effect of technological innovations on City planning
- Resource Type:
- MOOC