Tesis doctoral de Alba Fuertes Casals
Besides the efforts made by the construction sector to reduce the environmental impact of their processes and the presence of compliance schemes, construction sites are still responsible of a major source of pollution and adverse impacts on the environment. Most common challenges and obstacles encountered by construction organizations during the implementation process and use of environmental management systems are related to the measurement, monitoring and evaluation of the environmental performance of the construction processes. According to several research authors, the inherent peculiarities of the construction sector and the lack of technological support and guidelines for the data collection on the construction sites are perceived as major barriers. this dissertation develops, for the first time, a process-oriented model for the on-going and integrated measurement, monitoring and evaluation of the environmental performance of the significant environmental impacts related to the construction processes. The developed environmental performance measurement, monitoring and evaluation model (epmme-m) is aimed at providing construction organizations with the necessary information to implement a monitoring strategy to achieve and demonstrate continuous improvement of their processes. firstly, the developed epmme-m establishes, following a process-oriented approach, an environmental impact failure system that contains the on-site aspects that should be measured in every stage of the construction phase. It is achieved by means of the development of an innovative framework for the identification of the fault factors that cause or exacerbate the consequences of the significant environmental impacts related to the construction processes of residential buildings projects and similar projects. secondly, the epmme-m establishes an environmental performance indicator system supported by an automated data collection system, to continuously measure, monitor and assess the environmental performance of the environmental impacts and fault factors considered in the model. The environmental performance indicator system consists of a set of leading and lagging environmental performance indicators to evaluate the environmental performance of the impacts at a process and corporate level. The following categories are defined: environmental early warning indicators, environmental impact performance indicators and corporate environmental performance indicators. These indicators provide the necessary information to demonstrate compliance with environmental criteria, to identify trends over time and to proactively detect potential failure circumstances that can cause an environmental impact. furthermore, an automated data collection system is defined within the model to support the measurement and monitoring of the environmental performance indicators included in the environmental performance indicator system. The automated data collection system establishes a proactive and reactive data collection strategy for the on-going and integrated measurement and monitoring of the environmental impacts and fault factors on the construction site. This strategy is later described in several scenarios related to the management of materials, measurement and monitoring of consumption levels, management of equipment, management of workers, and management of the workplace. finally, this dissertation documents the validation of the developed model through five types of validity, namely, conceptual validation, logical validation, experimental validation, operational validation, and data validation. the dissertation concludes by outlining the main contributions of this research and recommends the interesting research subjects that were considered beyond the scope of this dissertation as future work.
Datos académicos de la tesis doctoral «Contributions to the measurement, monitoring and evaluation of environmental performance in construction sites«
- Título de la tesis: Contributions to the measurement, monitoring and evaluation of environmental performance in construction sites
- Autor: Alba Fuertes Casals
- Universidad: Politécnica de catalunya
- Fecha de lectura de la tesis: 12/01/2012
Dirección y tribunal
- Director de la tesis
- Miquel Casals Casanova
- Tribunal
- Presidente del tribunal: gonzalo Ramos scheider
- marco Masera (vocal)
- jacqueline Glass (vocal)
- Alberto Giretti (vocal)