The Tanikawa
Laboratory at Nagoya University is attempting to estimate and evaluate the weight
of human activity since 1998, and particularly to elucidate how much material has
been used in industrial processes. The physical weight of industrial life is
reflected in buildings, roads, cars, furniture and other durable materials
which provide services we need. Reducing accumulated weight and improving
efficiency by weight are vital in achieving a more sustainable society. The Tanikawa
Laboratory focuses on Multi-scale Material Stock Analysis with regard to heavy
anthropogenic disturbance, on national, regional and city scales.
City-scale
material stock analysis is especially relevant to our everyday lives. People
can see how much material supports their lives, and city planners can recognise
which areas have bigger metabolism. The Tanikawa Lab has used 4D-GIS (four
dimensional geographical information systems) to analyse material stocks and
local metabolism (Tanikawa and Hashimoto, 2009). This study clarified material accumulation by
vertical location, such as above and below ground, from the viewpoint of
recyclability. By estimating the demolition curve, the life span of buildings
in an urban area was found to be shorter than the national averages in both Japan
and the UK. This paper also showed that
in the Wakayama City centre in Japan in 2004, 47% of total construction
material was stocked in underground infrastructure.
On the other
hand, developing countries need to consume more materials to keep improving
their people's quality of life. This is leading to increased energy and
material flows, and GHG emissions. Material stock analyses are also being
performed for developing countries, especially China (i.e. Feng Shi et al.,
2012). The Tanikawa Lab discusses
possibilities for ‘dematerialization’ and ‘decarbonization’ in developing
countries. The researchers forecast
future steel and cement demand and related resource consumption and CO2
emissions for building and transportation infrastructure, based on a material
flow analysis of China.
Furthermore,
material stock and flow analysis is also useful for understanding disasters
which seriously damage cities, such as the earthquake in Japan that occurred on
11 March 2011. Estimated material stocks include volumes of accumulated
materials in cities, so material stocks in damaged areas are similar to the volume
of rubble which needs treatment and transfer. Volumes of material stocks in
damaged areas indicate the quantities of material necessary to reconstruct areas,
to enable a return to previous levels of local human activity.
References
H Tanikawa
and S Hashimoto (2009) Urban stock over time: spatial material stock analysis using
4d-GIS, Building Research & Information, Volume 37, Issues 5 & 6, Pages
483–502, 2009.
Feng Shi,
Tao Huang, Hiroki Tanikawa, Ji Han, Seiji Hashimoto, and Yuichi Moriguchi
(2012) Toward a Low Carbon Dematerialization Society: Measuring the Materials
Demand and CO2 Emissions of Building and Transport Infrastructure
Construction in China, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Vol. 16, No 4, August,
2012.
Hiroki
Tanikawa
No comments:
Post a Comment