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TEP4290

Built environment: Stock dynamics and climate change (MFA2)

Choose study year
Credits 7.5
Level Second degree level
Course start Spring 2025
Duration 1 semester
Language of instruction English
Location Trondheim
Examination arrangement Aggregate score

About

About the course

Course content

Built environment stocks - such as buildings, infrastructures, or vehicles - satisfy human needs and wants. At the same time, their build-up, use, and end-of-life management shape the main anthropogenic material and energy flows. Transforming the built environment stocks is therefore key for balancing human needs with environmental protection. The consequences of such transformations are often delayed due to the time it takes until new technologies have penetrated use (e.g., for reducing emissions) or reach end-of-life (e.g., for becoming available for recycling). To capture these delay effects for resource use and emissions, it is critical to analyze the dynamics of built environment stocks. This course introduces dynamic Material Flow Analysis (dMFA), a tool used to describe changing systems of resource use and emissions using mass and energy balance principles. The students learn how to develop and use dMFA models to generate forecasting and backcasting scenarios to determine how different emission targets can be reached under different conditions such as population growth, existing stock, climate, novel technologies, user behavior, regulations.

Lectures on the principles of dMFA and stock dynamics are complemented with introductory information on the use of Python and Jupyter Notebooks and practical exercises. In the exercises, the students work in groups of two to develop their own models and scenarios for vehicle and building stocks and interpret the results from a climate policy perspective. The students will present their intermediate and final work in a seminar. The course involves guest lectures from industry and government and an excursion.

Learning outcome

Knowledge: The students will be able to formulate the key problems related to selected built environment systems, to describe the state-of-the-art tools used to analyze these problems (including their strengths and limitations), and to describe the legal and socio-economic context.

Skills: The students will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to select appropriate system boundaries to answer specific questions related to a problem, to develop models suitable to identify alternative transformation pathways, to use Python for programming dMFAs, and to discuss different interventions in terms of their effectiveness and potential co-benefits, trade-offs, risks, and barriers.

General competence: The students will be able to conduct literature research using online databases and library systems, to work effectively in a team, to organize a code base for scientific research, and to communicate their findings in an effective and transparent way in oral (presentation) and written form (scientific report).

Learning methods and activities

Lectures by teachers and external experts, guided self-study for selected case studies (individual and in groups). The students work on their own projects with guidance in exercise sessions and seminars where they present their work. Course language is English.

Further on evaluation

The course is building up to a student project on the building stock of a country. This project is developed over multiple weeks in groups of two and results in a written report.

The final grade is composed of the written report on the project submitted by the group (40%) and an oral exam at the end of the course (60%).

The re-sit examination will be conducted as an oral examination.

Required previous knowledge

None.

Course materials

Various course materials will be used and distributed electronically on Blackboard during the semester.

Credit reductions

Course code Reduction From
TVM4129 7.5 sp Autumn 2013
This course has academic overlap with the course in the table above. If you take overlapping courses, you will receive a credit reduction in the course where you have the lowest grade. If the grades are the same, the reduction will be applied to the course completed most recently.

Subject areas

  • Waste Management and Recycling Technologies
  • Industrial Ecology
  • Technological subjects

Contact information

Examination

Examination

Examination arrangement: Aggregate score
Grade: Letter grades

Ordinary examination - Spring 2025

Assignment
Weighting 40/100 Date Submission 2025-04-29 Time Submission 15:00 Exam system Inspera Assessment
Oral exam
Weighting 60/100 Examination aids Code D Date 2025-05-14 Time 09:00 Duration 45 minutes

Re-sit examination - Summer 2025

Oral exam
Weighting 60/100 Examination aids Code D Duration 45 minutes