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A team of MIT researchers spanning four MIT departments — architecture;
civil and environmental engineering; earth, atmospheric, and planetary
sciences; and nuclear science and engineering — has been awarded a $3.76
million grant for a research project on sustainable development of
Kuwait’s built environment.
The project is being funded through the Kuwait-MIT Center for Natural Resources and the Environment (CNRE) by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS)
and is expected to be collaborative with other academic and research
institutions in Kuwait, which will be funded separately.
Oral
Buyukozturk, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering and principal investigator on the new project, says the
research is designed to address three critical, interrelated areas:
- Innovation in material design for sustainability: Nano-engineered
construction materials for durability in aggressive environment in
Kuwait, and designed to access superior material properties from
sustainable raw material inputs;
- Innovation in system design for sustainability: Ground motion
modeling and structural monitoring for performance-based engineering and
reliability; system design with advanced materials and energy
efficiency;
- Innovation in energy-based design for sustainability: Enhanced
operational energy efficiency and life-cycle performance of buildings
and neighborhoods in Kuwait.
This project is unique, Buyukozturk says, in that these core research
areas are addressed under the same umbrella and studied in parallel, for
the first time taking into consideration the interaction between them.
“This
is an exciting time for research and innovation in built environment
sustainability when the world’s physical infrastructure is deteriorating
and energy resources are becoming scarce," Buyukozturk says. "Material
innovations and creative structural system applications implementing
durability, energy efficiency, and better life-cycle performance,
combined with advanced sensor and monitoring technologies, are at the
heart of this leadership effort with the objective to establish a
science-based new paradigm in engineering design that can be used in
Kuwait and the general Gulf region and exported throughout the world."
The
CNRE — directed by Mujid Kazimi alongside associate director Jacopo
Buongiorno, both of the Department of the Nuclear Science and
Engineering — has recently initiated funding of several exploratory
research projects at the seed level, and funding at the signature level
for integrated large-scale research projects.
“This signature
project is a unique opportunity to generate transformative and scalable
technological solutions to a sustainable and energy efficient buildings
for Kuwait and The Gulf states in general. With a number of mega
projects being planned in that region of the world, the studies being
addressed, therefore, cannot be more timely. Our efforts at the center
are on-going to initiate more collaborative projects to tackle critical
energy and environment related issues.” says Murad Abu-Khalaf, the
executive director of CNRE.
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