Resiliency, Sustainability and Building with Masonry
Presented By: Muge Mukaddes Darwish, Ph.D.
Abstract:
The concepts of sustainability and resilience has significant effects on both research and practice in the built environment. These are paramount in the attempt to build ethical approaches with regards to the sensitive relationships between the built, the natural and the social environments. Resilience has different definitions according to disciplines and National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC*) (2009), defines resiliency as: "Infrastructure resilience is the ability to reduce the magnitude and/or duration of disruptive events. The effectiveness of a resilient infrastructure or enterprise depends upon its ability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and/or rapidly recover from a potentially disruptive event." Also According to Resilience Design Institute resilience is defined as “the intentional design of buildings, landscapes, communities, and regions in response to vulnerabilities to disaster and destruction of normal life.”
The most commonly used sustainability definition was introduced by the United Nations World Commissions on Environment and Development in a 1987 report titled, “Our Common Future.” According to UN report “Sustainability is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This concept centers around protecting nature and the environment from human activities. Thought also has to be given to who will protect humans from the environmental disasters that are either natural or man-made. This is the importance of designing and building for resilient and sustainable buildings and infrastructures. Therefore, the materials used in construction is one of the most important choices in order to achieve these goals. This presentation will provide reasons why masonry is one of the top contenders.
Bio:
Dr. Muge Mukaddes Darwish received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Engineering and Masters of Science from Texas Tech University in 1991 and 1998 respectively. She received her Graduate diploma in Interdisciplinary Engineering, in Bari, Italy in 1982. She has industry work and consulting experience internationally and she is currently an associate professor at Texas Tech University in Civil, Environmental & Construction Engineering Department.
Dr. Darwish’s goal is to advance engineering learning into broader ecosystems through means of innovation, globalization, or sustainability. She incorporates issues of sustainability in all of her course work to aid student’s understandings of the complexities of environmentally sensitive design. Her scholarly pursuits seek to understand and optimize the performance of human and natural systems to reduce environmental impacts while meeting design goals. She teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses with the emphasis of design and construction delivery systems for high performance green buildings, the basis of which is sustainability. She also thought Masonry Structures behavior and design for several years. Her research areas include, but are not limited to, masonry materials, sustainability, resilience and masonry, green building techniques, sustainable development, green building materials and sustainable (GREEN) construction.
Dr. Darwish is the author of several technical articles. She has reviewed several technical books, and journal articles. She is in the editorial board of journal of Sustainability, American Society for Engineering Educators (ASEE), Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) and she is a Technical Board Member for Latin American Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI).
