Creating Self-Sustainable Landscapes To Meet SITES Standards

Jourdan Friedlander; Patricia Kio; Yi Luo

Abstract:

The links between urban green infrastructure, UGI, and public health benefits have been established. Also, the healthcare sector is responsible for a sizable portion of global carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for approximately 5% of the total. As energy demand in the sector continues to rise, sustainable solutions are urgently needed. Subsequently, this study presents a novel method for integrating UGIs to reduce environmental impacts and reduce the energy use intensity, EUI, of healthcare facilities during their operational phase in humid subtropical climates through a case study approach. EUI is a key metric for benchmarking buildings, therefore, the two-year average EUI of an existing student health center at a large university in the United States was the baseline for exploring UGI interventions and their influence on the resulting simulated EUI. The study utilized data from the university's facilities services and positioned UGI interventions with the aid of analysis in Autodesk Forma. The possible impacts were investigated using Autodesk Revit's Building Information Modeling tools for the energy performance obtained by the energy optimization and carbon insights capabilities. The results show that the proposed UGI could reduce the EUI of the baseline building by up to 7%, reduce runoff by 37%, and increase rainfall events without runoff by 75%. The findings provide a novel method of initiating and investigating UGI interventions and their possible impacts on the EUI of existing healthcare facilities.