As an introduction to both Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing, this article describes GIS and explains its components and applications. The basic components of remote sensing such as the electromagnetic spectrum, spectral, ...

This note was reviewed in September 2018 and retained for legacy. George Baird, author of Sustainable Buildings in Practice – What the Users Think, presents a post-occupancy evaluation of Canterbury University’s Erskine Building. Although it has ...

Read time: 14 minutes Nightingale 2.0 in Fairfield by Six Degrees Architects, is the second Nightingale Housing project to be completed. The goal of each Nightingale project is to provide quality urban housing to owner occupiers, with high ...

This note discusses how the quantity surveyor's skills can be harnessed in the development of environmentally sustainable design.  It focuses on the skills of managing quantity and the relationship of quantity to cost and environmental performance.

This note was reviewed and approved for currency by the author in December 2018.  Thermal mass can be effectively employed in buildings to increase occupants' thermal comfort conditions. This paper seeks to clarify the ways in which this can be ...

This note was reviewed and approved for currency by the authors in September 2018. This note is directed to one major aspect of the comfort of building occupants – namely, thermal comfort. Even though it may be difficult to isolate thermal ...

This note was reviewed in August 2018 and retained for legacy. This paper introduces phase change materials (PCMs) as an alternative energy storage methodology to current latent heat exchange systems commonly used in buildings such as thermal mass.

Rapid advancement and change within Australia's predominant timber certification schemes has led to the revision of the original November 2004 paper: Timber and Wood products from environmentally certified forests and plantations. That paper now ...

Residential construction accounts for about 70 per cent of the total volume of sawn timber consumed in Australia, with the majority of the wood used for framing applications. Wood products have typically a lower greenhouse footprint than alternative ...

The note describes a new procedure for Land Resource Assessment (LRA).  It uses Multi-Criteria Evaluation methods (MCE) in a Geographic Systems (GIS) environment. As an example, the LRA method is applied in determining land suitability for ...