Faced with intensifying heat waves and the creation of urban heat islands, particularly in densely populated urban areas, Robin Monnier has focused his work on health risks and thermal comfort within buildings.

As a research engineer at the CES of Mines Paris-PSL, he worked on integrating the assessment of heat wave impacts on occupant health into life cycle assessment tools.

Objectives:

A life cycle assessment (LCA) of a building assesses various environmental impacts, including a DALY indicator for health (Disability Adjusted Life Years). At present, DALYs take into account impacts on a global scale, such as those generated by the manufacture of materials, building construction or energy and water consumption over the entire building life cycle. The main aim of Robin Monnier’s research is to quantify a local impact, linked to overheating in buildings, in order to limit health risks for occupants during heat waves. To this end, a new indicator has been developed, the Overheating DALY, enabling a precise assessment of the risk of death during periods of extreme heat.

Publication :

Article – Etude prospective sur la résilience des bâtiments face aux canicules

Article – Integrating effects of overheating on human health into buildings’ life cycle assessment

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We spend more than 80% of our time indoors. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) help us to target the sources of environmental impacts over a building’s entire life cycle. However, the so-called “use” phase only currently considers energy consumption, while occupants are directly exposed to pollutants in the indoor air. Building materials, surface coatings, furniture and even the detergents used for cleaning emit chemical compounds. Specifically, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) may be toxic and could even cause cancer.

Objectives

The objective of this thesis is to develop a methodology to calculate the impact of indoor air quality (IAQ) on human health and to incorporate this into the building’s LCA. The impacts of emissions from materials and activities will be calculated using an indicator already present in the building’s LCA, with a view to proposing a design assistance tool. Through a comparison of materials and a scaling of ventilation systems, this tool will limit the impacts on occupants. However, increasing ventilation to reduce IAQ impacts results in increased energy consumption, which means that solutions must be considered to identify the optimum level between high air quality and low energy consumption.

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Cyrille François is a postdoctoral teacher-researcher. His work focuses on the environmental issues associated with the daily mobility of individuals. He is interested in mobility, not in terms of the simple use of a technology but as a social reality anchored in a specific territory.

Liu Liu is a Civil Engineer with a PhD in Urban Planning. She drew up the “Transit Oriented Development” scenarios for the European Metropolis of Lille and participated in the development of energy transition strategies in Île-de-France.

Cyrille François and Liu Liu are currently working on Les Lumières Pleyel neighbourhood in Saint-Denis as an experimentation ground. This onsite work is part of their post-doctorate project at the École des Ponts ParisTech (Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport) in the framework of lab recherche environnement VINCI ParisTech.

This talk is co-organised as part of Leonard‘s “Ensemble pour demain” conferences. 

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Patrick Stella, Senior Lecturer at Agro ParisTech, will explain the urban heat island phenomenon and ways to mitigate it. Various approaches will be presented such as the use of new materials, urban reorganisation and revegetation.

This talk is organised by Leonard in partnership with the environmental research lab as part of the “30 minutes pour demain” talks.

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Digital model of the project (Pleiades).Dynamic thermal simulation results (Pleiades Comfie), temperatures during heatwaves.Life-cycle assessment results (Pleiades Equer), contributions to global warming.

The research work carried out at the École des Ponts ParisTech aims to anticipate mobility practices and services in the Les Lumières Pleyel neighbourhood as well as their impact on the environment. A statistical approach based on analysis of the socio-economic profiles of the individuals who will live and work in the neighbourhood aims to achieve an initial rapid estimate of uses and activities. This approach is then fine-tuned by multi-agent modelling that is aimed at a much more precise estimation of mobility needs and the effects of the implementation of new mobility services. The environmental impacts of associated mobility practices are then assessed through the prism of life-cycle assessment. It is therefore possible to assess the relevance of development choices and to propose solutions that are tailored to local characteristics, in order to improve the environmental performance of a neighbourhood.

the MATSim multi-agent model used by the LVMT laboratory of École des Ponts ParisTech to simulate the mobility of the Île-de-France population.

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