Research Publications

Serious games are computer games with a primary purpose other than entertainment. Serious games are frequently used for training purposes, and can be used for educational and research purposes, increa...

Current economic restructuring policies have ignored unintended environmental consequences and cobenefits, the understanding of which can provide foundations for effective policy decisions for gree...

Supplying adequate human nutrition within ecosystem carrying capacities is a key element in the global environmental sustainability challenge. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used effectively ...

While clean vehicles (i.e., vehicles powered by alternative fuels other than fossil fuels) offer great potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline-based vehicles, the associated impa...

Life cycle assessment practitioners struggle to accurately allocate environmental burdens of metals recycling, including the temporal dimension of environmental impacts. We analyze four approaches ...

The Renewable Fuel Standard (2007) set aggressive cellulosic biofuel goals that have not been realized. Corn ethanol dominates the market and penetration of cellulosic ethanol is unlikely in the ne...

Increasing urbanization places cities at the forefront of achieving global sustainability. For cities to become more sustainable, however, the infrastructure on which they rely must also become mor...

A critical question regarding the life-cycle design and management of any product system is, “What is its optimal service life?” The Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan has...

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) use grid electricity as well as on-board gasoline for motive force. These multiple energy sources make prediction of PHEV energy consumption challenging and...

Environmental implications of fleet electrification highly depend on the adoption and utilization of electric vehicles at the individual level. Past research has been constrained by using aggregate...

The U.S. transportation sector consumes over one third of the nation’s energy and accounts for 27% of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Vehicle manufacturers use electrification and mass reductio...

Growing heterotrophic algae in fermenters with sugar as the energy source rather than sunlight is an approach being commercialized in the private sector. While this strategy might be more technical...

Inclusion of plug-in electrified vehicles (PEVs) into light-duty vehicle (LDV) fuel economy and greenhouse gas (GHG) standards has been difficult for policy makers since the uncertainty and variati...

Vehicle manufacturers are utilizing advanced powertrains and lightweight materials to increase vehicle efficiency in response to higher energy prices and more stringent regulation. Advanced powertr...

Quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector is highly dependant upon the fuel mix of the electricity generating assets. That fuel mix can also vary geospatially and tempo...

As an alternative food source to wild fisheries, aquaculture shows a great potential to help meet the growing demand for seafood and animal protein. The expansion of aquaculture has been achieved p...

This article presents a framework to evaluate emerging systems in life cycle assessment (LCA). Current LCA methods are effective for established systems; however, lack of data often inhibits robust...

What socioeconomic factors are indicative of support or opposition for offshore wind development? At some distance offshore, does the local community incur a social cost or benefit from building a win...

With 45 thousand inpatient stays and 1.9 million outpatient visits in 2012, the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) manages a vast network of patients in constant flux. The Patient Foo...

Many in Michigan, like countless others across the United States, live in energy inefficient, detached single-family homes. There is an enormous opportunity to decrease state residential energy consum...

This project combined social science knowledge of landscape cues to care and perceived safety with hydrologic modeling through GIS to design, site, and analyze the stormwater performance of ...

Reflecting the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) on energy and emissions labels, and in vehicle GHG emissions regulations, is complex due to spatial and te...

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) use grid electricity as well as on-board gasoline for motive force. These multiple energy sources make prediction of PHEV energy consumption challenging and al...