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1.   Introduction

This statement describes the overall research plan and activities that I intend to focus on during the first three to four years of my academic career.  This plan is designed to facilitate the initiation of a strong research group than can contribute to the modernization of the current construction practices to meet current and future challenges imposed by the depletion of natural resources, limited financial resources, extreme events, increasing energy consumption, global warming and pollution.  This plan highlights four main components: (1) research topics that I intend to start working on immediately; (2) federal and state agencies that can fund these research studies; (3) type and extent of support needed to establish my research group; and (4) a summary of how this short to mid-term research plan fits into my long-term research plans.

2.   Short-Term Research Plan

I plan to work immediately on writing research proposals for two important topics focusing on: (1) planning and optimizing the reuse and recycling of construction materials in highway project with the objective of maximizing the environmental and economic sustainability of transportation networks; and (2) developing multi-objective decision-support models that facilitate planning and selection processes in design and management phases of building projects with the objectives of simultaneously maximizing LEED ratings and minimizing lifecycle costs.

2.1     Reuse and Recycling of Construction Materials in Highway Projects

Construction materials constitute a large component of highway construction.  These materials also have a huge environmental impact during the different phases of their lifecycles (e.g. extraction, production, maintenance, and disposal).  Many departments of transportation (DOTs) have therefore resorted to the use of by-products and recycled construction materials in order to control and minimize the aforementioned environmental footprint (Robinson et al. 2004).  This has established a pressing need to evaluate the environmental and economic sustainability of these alternative construction materials and the feasibility of their use.  Several research studies addressed this important topic and they focused on: (1) assessing the environmental impact of material reuse and recycling in highway construction projects (Huang and Hsu 2003; Petkovic et al. 2004; Roth and Eklund 2003); (2) studying the factors related to the use of recycled materials in highway construction, such as cost, availability and engineering performance (Robinson et al. 2004); and (3) analyzing the physical properties of by-products and the impact of their use on pavement performance (Nunes et al. 1996).

Despite the significant contributions of the aforementioned studies, no reported research has focused planning and optimizing construction materials reuse and recycling in highway projects with the objective of maximizing both the environmental and economic sustainability of transportation networks.  To this end, the proposed research study will focus on investigating and developing novel multi-objective planning and optimization models that are capable of: (1) analyzing the impact of different construction decisions on material reuse and recycling (e.g. material type, source, pavement thickness … etc.) on the environmental sustainability of transportation networks and their engineering performance; (2) identifying and analyzing the lifecycle costs associated with different material use or reuse alternatives; and (3) developing a multi-objective optimization model that is capable of generating optimal tradeoffs between minimizing the environmental footprint of highway construction, maximizing network performance and minimizing highway lifecycle costs, simultaneously.  This proposed research study is expected to contribute to: (1) reducing the demand of natural resources, such as aggregates and fossil fuel; and (2) controlling and minimizing the environmental and economic problems of construction waste handling.

2.2     Multi-Objective Decision-Support Models for Planning and Optimizing Construction of Green Buildings

Buildings have an enormous impact on the environment ranging from consuming abundant amounts of natural resources, energy and potable water to producing huge amounts of wastes and emissions (Pulselli et al. 2007).  It is therefore important to carefully select and implement the building design and development plans that can minimize this environmental footprint.  This is however a challenging task mainly due to: (1) the complexity of identifying the environmental footprint of different design alternatives and; (2) the conflicting nature between maximizing environmental sustainability of buildings and minimizing their lifecycle costs (Wang et al. 2005).  Accordingly, there is a need for new decision-support models for planning and optimizing construction of green buildings.  The limitations of existing research studies in this area include: (1) focusing only on developing building environmental assessment tools (Ding 2008; Pulselli et al. 2007); and (2) the lack of well-defined optimization objectives that focus on lifecycle costs (Castro-Lacouture et al. 2009), and are capable considering the overall building environmental footprint and not be limited only to the impact of its energy consumption (Wang et al. 2005).

The proposed research study will therefore focus on addressing the aforementioned important research gaps.  The main objectives of this study include: (1) formulating and developing an environmental impact assessment model that is capable of identifying the impact of building design and construction decision-making on the environment; (2) identifying and analyzing the lifecycle costs associated with these design and construction decisions; and (3) developing a multi-objective optimization model that is capable of generating optimal tradeoffs between maximizing LEED ratings and minimizing building lifecycle costs.