Seven billion people living on the earth face a challenge of sustainability development. Construction sector, a huge source of carbon emission and energy consumption, should be handled responsively to the natural environment and human society. Sustainable construction material and intelligent design are required to achieve sustainable development. Bamboo is renewable, biodegradable, and available locally in many parts of the world. It grows fast and has a high strength to weight ratio. Bamboo has a great potential to be used as a sustainable construction material. The bamboo plywood fabricated through the process of crushing, hot-pressing, adhesive spreading and gluing, cold-pressing, and curing, has stable dimensions and it is hydrophobic, and resistant to fungi and bacteria attack. It can be bonded with thin-walled steel sheet by structural adhesive and strengthened by screws to form various composite structural members e.g. slabs, walls, columns, and beams. This study evaluates sustainability of these bamboo-steel composite structures. Lab testing has revealed excellent performances of the structural members. The case study performed in this study indicates the composite structures have lower cost, lower greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumptions than other traditional construction materials.

More than 1.5 million cubic yard (CY) sediment needs to be removed annually from fifteen federal harbors, and numerous smaller ports for recreational navigation along the Ohio’s Lake Erie coast. Landfill of these materials is costly and depletes land resources. Open water placement of these materials in Lake Erie deteriorates water quality. In Cleveland, there are more than 14,000 acres of brownfields many with over 90% impervious surface. Impervious surface is commonly employed on post-industry lands to abate pollutions. However, this practice conflicts with “infiltration” the principle required by contemporary stormwater strategies. In addition, research shows that devaluation and destabilization of neighborhoods are around these unremediated brownfields, and the impervious surface increases flooding concerns in combined sewer overflow areas where many brownfields are located. Green infrastructure (GI), e.g. green roof, rain gardens et al, emphasizes infiltration and hydrological retention, and could potentially provide a flexible and affordable solution to remediate urban brownfield in Cleveland. The dredged material may supply nutrients for plant growth in GI and raw mineral materials for aggregate production, which has high hydrological retention capacity for GI construction.

The Greenhouse at Cunningham Hall was designed and built using single-paned glass panels, which prove to be energy inefficient thus increasing the operational costs of the facility. Furthermore, the structural failure of many panels has increased heat loss making the need to renovate the greenhouse a necessity.This research proposes to perform a cost-benefit analysis of the greenhouse. An energy model of the greenhouse is used to quantify the energy consumption of alternative paneling systems. We hypothesize that the use of glass panels with greater thermal coefficients would reduce energy spending of the greenhouse creating benefits that outweigh the cost of the upgrade over the panels’ lifespan. The selection of the optimal paneling system would be the one with appropriate thermal coefficient and visual transmission characteristics at the lowest life-cycle cost. Using these methodologies, we would be able to appropriately renovate the greenhouse, which would result in reduced energy spendings whilst creating a thermally accurate environment for biological research. In addition, a similar methodology may be implemented in other university buildings to economize energy spending throughout the Kent Campus.