The Future of Green Engineering
Figure 1: One of the world's first sustainable engineers
In recent years, focus has been shifting towards changing our behaviour to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly (read: greener). You may have surmised that land development and construction have not been spared from this new initiative. So how does this new mindset change the way we design, construct, and operate new buildings?
One of the main goals of sustainable design is to improve on efficiency [1]; this efficiency can manifest itself in different aspects of a building. For example, it may change the way building design, construction, and day-to-day building operations are approached. When talking about efficiency, we generally refer to how effectively resources are used.
Green Roofs
Some features seen on sustainable building include green roofs, which reduces the amount of water run-offs, solar panels and solar water heaters, which help harness renewable energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, reflective building surfaces, which reduces the amount of energy absorbed by the building and thus energy expended into controlling building temperatures, and high quality insulation which also help on reducing energy consumption.