Environmental Effect of Building throughout Life Cycle

Abstract

Environmental friendly construction is one of the key tasks for the construction professionals. Large projects, which have great environmental and social impact, should act as the models of environmental friendly construction. In this paper, the authors have concluded some measures which are taken to promote positive impact of the World Expo Shanghai 201 0 on environment and human health. The findings of this case study can be referred by construction professionals when conducting large scale projects

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

As one of the largest important projects in China recently, the Shanghai World Exposition 2010 uses "Better City, Better Life" as its theme. The main theme includes "Blending of Diverse Cultures in the City", "Economic Prosperity in the City", "Innovation of Science and Technology in the City", "Remodeling of Communities in the City" and "Rural-urban Interaction". Since 1851, the World Exposition has attained increasing prominence as grand event for economic, scientific, technological and cultural exchanges. Many creative inspirations and thoughts of human being have been shown and promoted through cross-country, cross- culture and cross-technology interaction. The Shanghai World Exposition 2010 is the first registered world exposition in a developing country. During the 184 days of exposition, the participants will use this important platform to explain urban civilization to the full extent, as well as display historical experience, exchange innovative ideas and demonstrate perspectives in the future, especially learuing from each other how to create an environmental friendly society and realize the sustainable development of human being.

The Expo 2010 Shanghai program consists of many sub-projects such as the major pavilions, the public utilities, the transportation infrastructures, the park, as well as the logistic facilities etc. The main pavilions can be further divided as participants' self-built pavilion, rent pavilion, and joint pavilion. Most of the buildings are temporary, except the Theme Pavilion, the China Pavilion, the Expo Center and the Performance Center. These four buildings are permanent which will not be demolished after the exposition. All of these sub-projects make the Expo 2010 Shanghai program as a large, complicated and multi-stakeholders system.

In order to manage so many sub-projects and present to the world a successful, splendid and unforgettable exposition, the organizer has made a set of systematically management ideas for this large program. Environmental friendly construction is among one the management ideas which mainly concentrates on the environmental protection and human healthy across the life-cycle stage of this large program.

To realize environmental friendly construction in the Expo 2010 Shanghai, the organizer refers to the related research and practice in both construction management and sustainable development fields. Literatures review of environmental friendly construction shows a fruitful result. The definition of sustainable development is described as: "those paths of social, economic, and political progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (Steele 1997). Based on the concept of sustainable development given by United Nation, the implementation plan has been made in different industrial ...