Sustainable Development in Civil Engineering

The cultural program includes:

• Boat city tour for students to get acquainted with the beauty of the city. 
• Excursion to the Hermitage, one of the world’s largest and oldest museums of fine art.
• Visit to the “Baltika” Brewery where students can learn about the construction and logistic peculiarities of the plant.
• Picnic at the seashore of the Gulf of Finland where students can enjoy Russian style barbecue 
• Excursion to Pushkin, former tzar summer residence, famous for its palace and park ensemble. Students will visit one of the most beautiful palaces — Palace of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. The peak of this excursion will be a visit to the Amber Room reconstructed in 2003 (Optional, for extra price).

Good command of English. All classes and extracurricular activities are conducted in English.
Applicants are expected to have at least 2 years of University level studies. Knowledge of the Russian language is not required.

Decision Science - how to encourage people to choose options that promote Sustainability in the Civil Engineering field. Theories of human judgment: normative, descriptive & prescriptive.

Choice of Sustainable way, Prospect Theory - the leading theory as to how decisions under risk and uncertainty deviate from the normative in predictable ways.

Sunk cost effects - how prior commitments influence current decisions.

Emotion Risk and Choice - how emotions affect perceptions of risk and risky choices - including in professional experts.

Risk perception - what factors determine the perception of hazards and threats?

Risk communication - how do lay people and experts understand probability expressions?

Confidence and Overconfidence in Intuitive thinking: Intuitive decisions - how decisions can be made without conscious deliberation.

Human interaction with the design of environments and decision support

PROF.: MARCELO DE ANDRADE ROMERO, University of Sao-Paolo

We’re a little bit more than 7 billion people in the whole world and more than 50% live in our cities and this percentage is growing day-by-day. It means that besides the fact that cities growing in it, cities also attract people from countryside, searching for business opportunities, jobs, etc. As a consequence the cities have to extend or horizontally or vertically and in both cases there are positive and negative aspects involved. Many countries, federal, state and municipal governments are trying to minimize the effect from big agglomerations on the environment. Many programs has been created in the last ten years including United Nations programs and ONGs programs around the world, such as Globalization and World Cities Network Ranking (GaWC) or 100 Resilient Cities or even European Green Capitals. This course intends to present some concepts about that as well as some examples of successes and environmental struggles by some cities around the world. The course also intends to present the concept about sustainable buildings and how the buildings can become more sustainable considering first passive technologies possibilities and then efficient active technologies.

The course will present the following content:

1. Challenges of Megacities: Concepts and cases - 3 hrs.; 
2. Urban Governance and Sustainability – 3 hrs.; 
3. Sustainable Architecture: Concepts and cases – 3 hrs.; 
4. Sustainable Buildings: Concepts and cases – 3 hrs.

Prof. Roode Liias, Tallinn University of Technology

This course is designed to give students an understanding of the role maintenance activities when assuring the sustainable lifetime of the buildings. The main focus is on economic, social and environmental issues related to maintenance and managing the activities during the use of the building. The course stresses especially on maintenance initiatives in EU and deals with specific issues such as energy efficiency. The impact of maintenance to user’s organization are discussed. This course also informs students the theories, practices and principles of real estate and housing in the European culture, business and society and their interrelation with the maintenance concepts.

Students can develop oral and written communication skills when preparing individual presentations related to the topic.

Preferably, students with civil engineering, architectural, urban planning and property/real estate management background are expected. But anybody may attend who is interested in built environment sustainability issues.

Bernhard Bauer, DDipl.-Ing. TU Graz

Sustainable certification systems of buildings.
Sustainable planning processes / Building Information Modelling.
Impact of sustainable project development on the value of real estate.
Retrofitting and post occupancy of the built environment.
Criteria for sustainable construction sites.
Method comparison of construction methods.
Efficient management of construction sites