Sustainable Design and Build: Building, Energy, Roads, Bridges, Water and Sewer Systems

By Md. Faruque Hossain

Sustainable Design and Build provides a complete reference for engineers and scientists who want to conduct sustainability research. The book begins with a rudimentary discussion of environmental pollution and energy that is followed by their applications for solving problems in construction processes and practices governing advanced building design, infrastructure and transportation, and water and sewage. Other topics include engineering invisible roads and bridges, smart building technology, building information modeling, energy modeling, resilience in urban and rural development, engineering invisible roads and bridges, zero emission vehicles and flying transportation technology.

This book presents a valuable guide to sustainable design and construction processes and methods.

• Covers the latest research in the utilization of renewable energy and the implementation in construction and building system design
• Includes a detailed discussion on combined technology applications of energy, gas and water
• Covers advanced methods and technologies for constructing sustainable transportation systems, including roads, bridges, tunnels and hardscapes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Sep 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780128168882

Md. Faruque Hossain

Faruque Hossain has over twenty years industrial experience in sustainable design and construction development, and project management for New York city agencies including: New York City Department of Environmental Protection and New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at New York University, Department of Civil and Urban Engineering.

Book preview

Sustainable Design and Build

Building, Energy, Roads, Bridges, Water and Sewer Systems

Md. Faruque Hossain

Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, New York University, Brooklyn, New York

CEO, Green Globe Technology, Inc., Flushing, New York

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

Preface

Chapter One. Introduction

1.1. Environment

1.2. Energy

1.3. Building

1.4. Infrastructure and Transportation

1.5. Water

1.6. Conclusion

Chapter Two. Environment

2.1. Air

2.2. Water

2.3. Land

2.4. Discussion

2.5. Conclusion

2.6. Climate Change

2.7. Conclusion

Chapter Three. Energy

3.1. Conventional Energy

3.2. Sustainable Energy

Chapter Four. Advanced Building Design

4.1. Energy-Producing Building

4.2. Integrated Building Design

4.3. Energy Modeling to Cool and Heat the Building Naturally

4.4. Building Information Modeling

4.5. Smart Building Technology

4.6. Resilience in Urban and Rural Development

4.6.6. Discussion and Future Perspectives

Chapter Five. Infrastructure and Transportation

5.1. Green Infrastructure

5.2. Invisible Roads and Sustainable Transportation Engineering

5.3. Zero-Emission Vehicle

5.4. Flying Transportation Technology

Chapter Six. Water

6.1. Natural Water Resources

6.2. Water and Wastewater Treatment

Acknowledgments

6.3. Recent Developments in Photocatalytic Water Treatment Technology

Acknowledgments

6.4. Renewable Water Engineering

Chapter Seven. Best Management Practices

7.1. Environmental Management

7.2. Energy Management

7.3. Building Management

7.4. Water Management

7.5. Infrastructure and Transportation Management

7.6. General Management

7.7. Conclusion

Index

Copyright

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Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

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Dedication

To

Nowshin, Shafin, and Faria

I love them more than their imagination.

I hope one of them will fulfill my dream of changing the world by building a sustainable earth.

About the Author

Dr. Md. Faruque Hossain has more than 20  years of industry experience in the field of sustainable research, design and build for large-scale buildings and civil, energy, environmental, and critical Infrastructure projects. He worked and consulted in diverse small companies to fortune-listed companies and managed as less as million-dollar to over billion-dollar projects. Faruque also worked for the New York City as the member of senior management team and interacted with the highest level government officials of local, state, federal, and international agencies for collaborating to build a sustainable Earth. During his tenure in New York City agency, Faruque managed a world-class team of scientists, architects, engineers, contractors, and consultants from top tier engineering firms and maintained highest level professional relationship to conduct sustainability practices on assigned projects. Hossain received his PhD from Hokkaido University, did postgraduate research in engineering at the University of Sydney, and executive education in architecture at Harvard University. He is a LEED-certified professional and editor of several international building and sustainable engineering related journals. Dr. Hossain, of Bangladesh origin, is renowned as the industry leader and notable scientist in the field of sustainable research, development, and project management for building a better planet. He has dozens of world class publications in very high-impact journals, and he wrote two books (Elsevier), and four book chapters (Francis and Taylor, and Springer) in the field of sustainable design and build. Currently, he is working at the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University as an adjunct professor and simultaneously running his own company Green Globe Technology with the motto to practice sustainability for Building a Cleaner and Greener World.

Preface

What world are we living in? Indeed, a terrible one with the crisis of environment, energy, shelter, infrastructure, transportation, and water. The fact that anthropogenic conventional practice to consume the natural resources is putting mother Earth in a dangerous level results in natural resource getting finite level and causing a deadly unequilibrium environment to survive any living being on it near future. Simply, the total system on Earth is getting malfunctioned silently, which needs to be fixed by giving immediate attention to utilize the wise consumption of natural resource and the implementation of sustainable technology to secure a balanced Earth. The notion of sustainability might be wide, but if we think for the practical solution to the survival of the Earth, it might have many innovative ideas to secure the Earth in a balanced environment. Therefore, sustainability research, development, and application must be practices by best scholastic approach of science and technology to build a clearer and greener world for our survival.

This book necessarily focuses on describing the holistic approaches to the technical aspects of sustainability for commercial applicability in society and the environment to achieve a best-balanced Earth. Therefore, this book describes the root cause of global sustainability problems and sets out a series of solutions by presenting innovative ideas through research and application. Simply, the goal of this book is to define the context of instigation to think through the scientific theories and practical applications with the holistic approach of both problems and solutions of sustainable mechanism by the presentation of the main seven themes (1. Introduction, 2. Environment, 3. Energy, 4. Advanced Building Design Technology, 5. Infrastructure and Transportation, 6. Water, and 7. Best Management Practices), which are very much interconnected to the global environment and our daily lives. Consequently, the importance of sustainability is also discussed considering the wise application of science and technology by trickling down the advancement thoughts, research, and application to achieve a broader goal of sustainability for building a better planet for the future generation.

Md. Faruque Hossain,     Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, New York University

Chapter One

Introduction

Abstract

The concept sustainable design and build (SDB) is the advancement of science and engineering principles performed by scientists, consultants, architects, engineers, construction managers, policymakers, and investors to secure a more ecologically balanced planet Earth. The exercise of SDB is the practical implementation of sustainability tools in all sectors which are environmentally friendly and resource-efficient throughout their life cycle to maximize the achievement of economic value, its net contribution to environmental functions, and its social equity to build a resilience community. Necessarily, SDB needs to be practiced by implementing cutting-edge metrics and tools to enhance the sustainability through the world primarily focusing on five major sectors: (1) environment, (2) energy, (3) building, (4) infrastructure and transportation, and (5) water. Simply put, SDB can be defined as the combined method to implement and manage green performance on planning, designing, and constructing of all sectors of environment, energy, building, infrastructure, water by conducting advanced research and environmentally friendly technology application for building a better environment on Earth.

Keywords

Advanced building design technology; Environmental sustainability; Renewable and sustainable energy technology; Sustainable infrastructure and transportation engineering; Water resource management

1.1. Environment

Sustainability, within the environmental sector, means that the biological systems must remain productive and diverse for an indefinite period of time. One example of biological systems that are considered sustainable is long-lived and healthy ecosystem. Generally, sustainability can be defined as the durability of processes and systems including the interrelated domains of culture and politics, economics, and ecology to acquire healthy environments that will support human survival and that of other creatures of planet Earth [1,2]. Consequently, in preserving the natural resources, sustainability encounters social challenge that involves ethical consumerism, individual and local lifestyle, urban transportation and planning, as well as national and international laws. While sustainable development must be adopted as the holistic method to acquiring a greener and cleaner planet Earth, it is essential to view sustainability as the target goal of humanity to confirm an equilibrium ecosystem [3,4]. As a result, it is essential for sustainability to be majorly concerned with the commitment of policymakers, investors, engineers, architects, and scientists to administer and promote necessary planetary environmental resources essential in securing resilience and attain sustainability of these important resources for benefits of forthcoming generations [5,6].

Environmental resiliency, and thus environmental sustainability, is usually measured by occurrences or junctures where the mixing of naturally befalling regenerative forces, such as biomass, vegetation, atmosphere, soil, water, and solar energy, intermingle with their underlying forces into the environment. Human activities are the major drivers to destructing the systems of the Earth as well as its biophysical mechanism [7–9]. Therefore, the impact of a community on the environment is instigated by a single person or the available population, which in turn relies on complex ways on exactly what natural resources are being utilized, whether those natural resources are renewable, as well as the human activity scale in comparison to the ecosystems' carrying capacity. Accordingly, the resource consumption pattern by a population of individuals within all sectors is generating adversative effect on biodiversity, conservation biology, environmental science, and Earth science. Progressively, the biodiversity loss within the environment mainly from the habitat fragmentation and loss generated by human land appropriation for agriculture, forestry, and development as natural capital is rapidly changing all over the globe [10,11]. As a result, this change in land use plays a major part to the operations of the changes in the biosphere in relative magnitudes of land devoted to grassland, woodland, forest, agriculture, and urbanization. All of which have significant impact on global nitrogen, carbon, and water biogeochemical cycles. Basically, product consumption at all scales via the consumption chain, beginning with the economic sectors' impact via national economies to the international economies and with the impacts of personal spending patterns and lifestyle choices via demands of resources of particular services and goods, is seriously impacting on the environment [12,13]. To maintain the resource consumption, resource productivity, as well as resource intensity, it is necessary to investigate the pattern of consumption that is associated with resources to the economic, social, and environmental effects at the context or scale. The initial world scientific evaluation on the effects of production and consumption was published in 2010 by the international Resource Panel of United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which recognized the priority actions for both developing and developed countries [14–16]. The findings of the study indicated that consumption by household associated with energy-using, food, shelter, and mobility products is the major cause of life cycle effects of consumption and generating limited level of the existing natural resources. As a result, to safeguard these natural resources through the implementation of basic principles of complex ecological issues and formulation of operational solutions, it is necessary to undertake advanced research to encounter challenges generated internationally through increasing urbanization, ecological degradation, and population growth.

1.2. Energy

The global atmosphere is now getting seriously dangerous as increment of all aspects of the carbon cycle into the atmosphere has become the major crisis throughout the world due to the usage of conventional energy [17,18]. Air toxicants such as volatile organic compounds, sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide as well as airborne pollutant substances that generate acid rain and photochemical smog, air pollution and the deadly chlorofluorocarbon are causing severe effects on the Earth's atmosphere and environment [19,20]. Therefore, sustainable energy is an urgent demand to serve the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Whereas renewable energy refers to the energy that is naturally refilled on a human being's timescale, sustainable energy is the energy whose usage will not jeopardize the system within which it is implemented to an extent of being unfit to offer the needs for the coming days. The principle of sustainability encompasses having the four interrelated domains: (1) culture, (2) politics, (3) economics, and (4) ecology. Technologies promote sustainable energy including renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, wave power, geothermal energy, bioenergy, tidal power, and technologies designed to improve energy efficiency.

Significant advancement is being carried out in transition of energy from fossil fuels to environmentally sustainable systems, and finally to the point where 100% renewable energy is being supported by several studies. As a result, changes that need to be made on the present-day conventional energy consumption will not only be on how energy is supplied but also on how it is used, and it is important to reduce the volume of energy needed to deliver different goods and/or services. Stabilizing and decreasing the emissions of CO2 simply requires energy efficiency and renewable energy to remain as the twin pillars of environmental sustainability. Based on the current historical examination, the growth rate in demand of energy has generally overtaken the rate of enhancements in energy efficiency [21–23]. This is because of the ongoing population and economic growth. Consequently, aggregate use of energy as well as correlated emissions of carbon have constantly increased, which ultimately causes deadly climate changes. In consequence, supplies of renewable and sustainable (clean) energy are an exigent demand to alleviate global energy demand and mitigate climate change crisis. Therefore, clean and renewable energy (and energy efficiency) are no longer niche sectors that are promoted only by governments and environmentalists but also by private sector by increasing the levels of investment for confirming a clean and green Earth.

So, to finally achieve a clean world, it is essential to look after the sustainable and renewable energy sector through application technology, carrying out advanced research, as well as via commercial application. Essentially, much focus must be directed toward renewable power system planning, design and building, and sustainable application of energy within all sectors of infrastructure and building to approve sustainable energy system construction and design, and control.

1.3. Building

All over the world, buildings have been identified to consume very large portions of natural resources including water and energy. In the present day, buildings are responsible for 40% of the worldwide CO2 emissions, which is equal to 9 billion tons of carbon dioxide yearly, and by 2050, these emissions are likely to double [24–26]. It is essential for one to think through the clean building to attain ecologically friendly building and energy efficiency, which eventually will combine a massive collection of skills, approaches, and practices to cut and finally eliminate the adverse environment impacts. Sustainable building refers to both the structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource efficient throughout a building's life cycle from planning to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. This requires close cooperation of the contractor, the architects, the engineers, and the client for the entire project life cycle to achieve the benefit economy, durability, and comfort. So, the sustainable building development has several drives including social, economic, and environmental benefits. As such, the initiatives of sustainability require a synergistic and an incorporated design in both the existing building retrofitting and new construction to support environment and energy. Considering energy efficiency, toxic and waste reduction, maintenance and operations optimization, interior environmental quality improvement, material efficiency, design efficiency, and water efficiency, the technologies or practices applied in sustainable building essentially require to be focused, so as to generate a larger amassed impact.

Making the most of the renewable resources is frequently stressed in sustainable building. Examples may include utilizing sunlight via photovoltaic equipment; active and passive solar; and trees and planets via rainwater run-off reduction, rain gardens, and green roofs [27,28]. In addition, utilizing low-effect constructing materials and using permeable concrete or packed gravel rather than asphalt or conventional concrete to improve groundwater replenishment are other approaches that are being used [29,30]. Moreover, having appropriate synergistic design in place may enable individual green building technologies to join forces to generate increasing impact. Clean design or green architecture on the artistic side is the philosophy of planning a construction that is in line with the resources nearby the site and natural feature. Designing clean building involves many key steps: identifying green materials of building from indigenous sources, reducing loads, optimizing systems, and finally producing on-site renewable energy.

Consequently, it is necessary for the building sector to confirm that a dynamic clean research, management, and development are all in stages of the expansion of any amenities within the rural and urban regions. Essentially, emphasis should be directed to the assessments of project life cycle, solicitation, preconstruction, design development, project planning, project ecology, site selection, methods and application of construction materials to ultimately confirm a sustainable building for the civil and rural community.

1.4. Infrastructure and Transportation

Traditional infrastructure is not only causing trillions of dollars every year but also playing vital role to losses of lands and creating adverse environmental and climate perplexity [31,32]. Sustainable infrastructure is a network providing the ingredients for solving urban and climatic challenges by building with nature, thus it would be a best option to secure a resilient community. The main components of this approach are roads, highways, bridges, tunnel management to achieve climate adaptation, less heat stress, more biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water, and healthy soils, as well as the more anthropocentric functions such as increased quality of life through recreation and provision of shade and shelter in and around towns and cities [33–35]. Subsequently, sustainable infrastructure serves to provide an ecological framework for social, economic, and environmental health of the surroundings. Thus, sustainable infrastructure is considered as the best engineering practice that would achieve the construction and management of more holistic roads, highways, bridges, tunnels to smoothly run daily life.

On the other hand, traditional transport systems have significant impacts on the environment, accounting for nearly 28% of world energy conventional consumption, and it is causing proportional climate change and adverse environmental impact [36–38]. The sustainable transportation refers to the broad subject of transport that should be environmentally benign in the sense of social, environmental, and climate impacts and the ability to mitigate the environmental pollution indefinitely. Components for evaluating sustainable transport include the advanced vehicle technology to be used for road, water, or air transport by using renewable and clean energy, where the infrastructure should be able to accommodate the clean fuel–operated transport for roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and terminal pathways to mitigate energy and traffic jam crisis. Simply sustainable transport systems will make a positive contribution to the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the communities by binding social and economic connections where people can be quickly benefitted by this sustainable mobility such as zero-emission vehicle and flying transportation technology. Necessarily, the promotion of incremental improvement in zero-emission fuel vehicle and clean and renewable energy–operated flying transportation vehicle technology migrating from fossil-based transportation system would be the best option to measure the sustainability measurement and optimization.

Therefore, the sustainable infrastructure system and advanced transportation vehicle are needed urgently to have the better, safer, and faster mobility and less environmental impact comparing traditional infrastructure and conventional vehicles. Therefore, the main research and development must be focused to practice sustainable infrastructure development and advanced zero emission and advanced technology for flying vehicles for building cleaner and greener world.

1.5. Water

Global environment has been impacted by the global water cycle by the acceleration of evaporation which creates a cooling effect on Earth and climate change [14,39]. Water covers 75% of the Earth's surface, and out of this, 97% is the salty water of the oceans and only 3% freshwater, most of which is locked up in the Antarctic ice sheet [8,40]. Most of it is in icecaps, glaciers (69%), and groundwater (30%), whereas all lakes, rivers, and swamps combined only account for a small fraction (0.3%) of the Earth's total freshwater reserves [1,41]. The main source of our daily usage of water is either a freshwater or groundwater reserve. Although, the supply of freshwater is constantly replenished through precipitation because of the water cycle, within the last several decades, groundwater strata have been getting lower nearly 10  m, scaring the groundwater finite level in the near future [31,42]. In contrast, rising urbanization contaminates freshwater supplies, thereby triggering adverse environmental impact, which eventually alarms the survival of all living beings on Earth due to the shortage of water near future. Because water has distinctive features that are important for life proliferation to respond in ways that eventually permit replication, it is very important to all living organisms for their own existence. Simply water is essential to all living beings for their survival because it has many distinct properties that are critical for the proliferation of life to react in ways that ultimately allow replication. It is, therefore, vital both as a solvent in which many of the body's solutes dissolve and as an essential part of many metabolic (catabolism and anabolism) processes within the living body [39,43]. In catabolism, water is utilized to break the bonds within large molecules to create smaller molecules, and in anabolism, water is detached from molecules to create larger molecules. Both these processes of anabolism and catabolism cannot exist without water [8,18]. In the plant kingdom, water is the fundamental element for photosynthesis and respiration where photosynthetic cells use the sun's energy to split off hydrogen from oxygen in water. Afterward, hydrogen is mixed with carbon dioxide (absorbed from air or water) to form glucose that is utilized as their food and release oxygen to balance the ecosystem.

Within the world's economy, water naturally plays a significant role, with almost 70% of the freshwater being utilized by humans going to agricultural sector, which has a larger contribution to global economy [21,40]. For several parts of the globe, fishing in freshwater and saltwater bodies is a key food source and an important part of the globe's economy referred to as Blue and Brown Economy. In homes and industries, huge amounts of steam, ice, and water are utilized for heating and cooling. For an extensive chemical substances variety, water is a tremendous solvent, and as a result, it is extensively utilized for washing and cooking, and in industrial processes.

Unfortunately, this natural resource is becoming scarcer globally where certain places are in a vulnerable condition. In the developing world, 90% of all wastewater still goes untreated into local rivers and streams, causing dangerous water environment in the water world. In developed countries, usage of conventional treatment processes causes severe environmental pollution [30,31]. Some 50 countries, with roughly a third of the world's population, also suffer from medium- or high-water stress, and 17 of these extract more water annually than that is recharged through their natural water cycles [8,14]. The strain not only affects surface freshwater bodies such as rivers and lakes but also degrades groundwater resources. Currently, about a billion people around the world routinely drink unhealthy water, resulting in some 5 million deaths each year caused by polluted drinking water.

Thus, advance research and development of water is needed to sustain this natural resource where primary focus needs to be given by conducting emerging distributed systems for water supply and wastewater treatment to confirm a sustainable Earth. Consequently, much more scientifically and technologically advanced research and development must be applied, considering environmentally friendly (1) physical and chemical treatment processes for water and wastewater treatment process, (2) environmental biotechnology for use in water resource management and bioremediation, and utilize wastewater into useful product, (3) watershed and wetland management to reduce the water loss, (4) advanced environmental engineering design to mitigate the groundwater, (5) sustainable water resource development as a new source of water supply.

1.6. Conclusion

in 121,017,712  years, and thus, it would be the end of the story of human civilization on Earth. Simply, sustainable science and technology implementation is an urgent need in all sectors of environment, energy, building, infrastructure, transportation, water for all living beings and the human race on Earth.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Green Globe Technology under the grant RD-02018-03. Any findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this paper are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Green Globe Technology.

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Chapter Two

Environment

Abstract

Our environment is severely impacted by greenhouse gases (GHGs). These gases absorb heat, keeping the surface temperature on Earth at 14°C on average, while without them, the Earth's average surface temperature would otherwise have been −19°C. Due to human activity, and particularly the burning fossil fuels, land-use changes along with minor contribution of external and internal forces, the amount of GHGs has increased and GHGs are absorbing heat, directly leading to more heat being retained in the atmosphere, causing climate change. A recent study revealed that global carbon (C) emissions from fossil fuels were 9.795 gigatonne (Gt) in 2015 or 35.9 GtCO2 of carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel emissions were 0.6% above emissions in 2013 and 60% above emissions in 1990 (the reference year in the Kyoto Protocol). Fossil fuel emissions accounted for approximately 75% of total CO2 emissions from human activities in 2015. This portion of emissions originates from coal (42%), oil (33%), gas (18%), cement (6%), and gas flaring (1%). Consequently, the amount of CO2 in the air increased from 280  parts per million by volume (ppmv) at the beginning of the century to 400  ppm  at the end of 2015. This has resulted in the atmospheric CO2 concentration getting toxic level faster. In addition, water contamination and mismanagement of water cause severe environment pollution and spreading of deadly waterborne diseases. At the same time, the land-use changes (massive development, cutting down forests to create farmland, etc.) have led to changes in the amount of sunlight reflected due to the external forces from the ground back into space. The scale of these changes is estimated to be approximately one-fifth of the forces (25%) on the global climate due to changes in emissions of GHGs. The largest effect of deforestation is estimated to be at high latitudes where the albedo of snow-covered land, previously forested, has increased. Thus, aspects of environmental vulnerability have been specifically analyzed in this chapter considering air, water, and land use attributions to the climate change.

Keywords

Air quality; Climate change; CO2 emission; Environmental vulnerability; Land misuse; Survival period of life on earth; Water contamination

2.1. Air

At present, global carbon emission and sequestration rates are not in equilibrium level, therefore, the global environment is currently under a severe vulnerable condition, which threatens the survival of all living beings on Earth. The annual global carbon emission considering all forms of CO2 emissions, including the burning of fossil fuel and terrestrial land-use change, along with other related factors and the global carbon sequestration by all sources, such as the ocean sink, the earth sink, absorption by terrestrial vegetation, and other associated factors, has been estimated in this report to determine the acceleration of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The estimate shows that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has been increasing at a rate of 2.11% ppm per year for the past several years, and it continues to rapidly increase. It is well established that the toxic level of atmospheric CO2 concentration is 60,000  ppm  at which all living beings will die within 30  min [in 121,017,712  years because the toxic level of CO2 will reach 60,000  ppm within this time, and thus, it would be the end of the story of human civilization on Earth.

2.1.1. Background

The annual average atmospheric CO2 concentration is currently 400  ppm [1,3]. Because of the industrial revolution of the early 1990s, fossil fuels, deforestation, land-use change, and external forces have become the key sources of anthropogenic CO2 that have caused the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to rapidly increase and change the global climate (Fig. 2.1).

In this paper, I have calculated the global carbon budget, the global CO2 concentration, and, by determining the amount of CO2 being input to the atmosphere relative to the global CO2 balance, the rate of acceleration of atmospheric CO2 emissions annually. Furthermore, I have prepared detailed data sets using MATLAB software and have calculated the annual total global carbon emissions from the preindustrial period (1750) to the modern period (2015). All CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuel and land-use change from 1750 to the industrial revolution and from 1870 to the modern era have been analyzed in detail by incorporating data from the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5) into MATLAB software to ensure the most accurate estimates of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because this gas is the major driver of climate change. The estimated CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuel are referred to as EFF; Gt(yr−¹), and the emissions resulting from land-use change are ELUC; Gt(yr−¹). The sequestration and the absorption of CO2 by the oceans, which is referred to as SOCEAN; Gt(yr−¹), and that by the terrestrial vegetation, which is referred to as SLAND; Gt(yr−¹), have also been estimated to determine the growth rate of the atmospheric CO2 concentration (GATM; Gt(yr−¹)) by using the following equation describing the CO2 balance among the atmosphere, ocean, and land:

Figure 2.1  The leading EOF pattern (in °C) and associated standardized principal component (PC) of global climate change based on 8-year low-pass filtered annual anomalies after the long-term trend for 1920–2015 is removed from ( A ) and ( B ) GISTEMP; ( C ) and ( D ) HadCRUT; and ( E ) and ( F ) external forcing based on 18 CMIP5 models. Values shown at the top-right of the left panels represent the percentage variance explained by each mode, and those at the right panels represent the correlation coefficient with PC1 of external forcing. Values shown on in the middle of the left panels.

(2.1)

(2.2)

The atmospheric GATM is calculated in parts per million per year (ppm yr−¹), which can be converted into the total mass of carbon per year (GtC yr−¹). Assessments of environmental vulnerability have been conducted globally for the past several decades, and numerous studies have been performed [2–4]. To date, little research has been done on the adverse impacts of toxic levels of CO2 in the atmosphere on life on Earth. Thus, the purpose of this report is to identify the yearly growth rate of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and its impact on the future state of the global environment to determine the survival period of humanity and other living organisms.

2.1.2. Methods and Approach

Global CO2 emissions, absorption, and sequestration were analyzed by interpreting reports from several organizations (CDIAC, IEA, UNEP, USDoE, ECE, EIA, PBL, NEAA, NEDO, NOAA, and NASA), and the data were incorporated into MATLAB software to develop the data set. To accurately calculate annual global carbon estimates, I considered all data up to the year 2015 and the projected fossil energy emissions for 2016, and from the projected total carbon estimates for 2016, the annual growth rate of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was determined [5,6].

2.1.2.1. CO2 Emissions From Fossil Fuel

The yearly growth rate in CO2 emissions was estimated from the difference between two consecutive years, which was divided by the first-year emissions per the following equation:

(2.3)

In general, a simple calculation can characterize the yearly CO2 emission growth rate. However, to accurately determine the growth rate over multiple decades, I applied a leap year factor to confirm the net annual growth rate of carbon (EFF) by using its logarithm equivalent in the following equation:

(2.4)

Here, I calculated the pertinent CO2 emission growth rates considering multidecadal periods by implementing a nonlinear drift into ln(EFF) in Eq. (2.4) and by calculating the yearly growth percentage. Thus, I fitted the logarithm of EFF into the equation rather than directly using EFF to ensure an accurate growth rate estimate and satisfy Eq. (2.3) [1,7,8].

2.1.2.2. CO2 Emissions From the Land-Use Change (ELUC)

The emissions reported here (ELUC) include CO2 fluxes from deforestation, forest degradation, and the abandonment of agricultural land associated with modern civilization and were calculated by implementing dynamic global vegetation modeling (DGVM) bookkeeping simulations in MATLAB [9–11]. The simulations were prepared with DGVMs, in which I initially clarified the historical changes in land use followed by the atmospheric CO2 concentrations [12–14]. Therefore, I implemented a time series of the distribution of preindustrial land cover by allocating the estimated variance into the first simulation and the dynamic evolution of biomass soil carbon to the prescribed land-cover change [15–17]. All the DGVMs here represent complete vegetation growth and decay processes as well as the decomposition of dead organic matter to determine the response to increasing atmospheric CO2 levels [18–20].

2.1.2.3. Ocean CO2 Sink

The CO2 sequestered by the ocean from 1959 to 2015 was calculated by combining seven global oceans biogeochemical cycle models, and this approach can be used to comprehensively analyze the physical, chemical, and biological processes that are directly impacted by the concentration of CO2 at the ocean surface as well as the air–sea CO2 fluxes [21,22]. Thus, the ocean CO2 sequestration is normalized by accurate observational values by dividing the individual yearly values by the modeled average for 1990–99 and then multiplying the result by an observation-based calculation of 2.2 GtC yr−¹ [16,23,24]. Therefore, the oceanic CO2 sequestration per year (t) in GtC yr−¹ is calculated as follows:

(2.5)

where n represents the number of variables; m represents the factors; and t represents the period. The normalization is considered when the ratio or the sequestration of CO2 in the 1990s are assumed to be underestimated and is initially triggered by diffusion, which relies on the CO2 gradient. Therefore, the ratio is considered a naturally appropriate approach that accounts for the time dependence of the CO2 gradient in the oceans [25–27].

2.1.2.4. CO2 Absorption by Terrestrial Vegetation and the Earth

The variations in the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels (EFF) and land-use change (ELUC) as well as the growth rate of the atmospheric CO2 concentration (GATM) and ocean CO2 sequestration (SOCEAN) can be accounted for to determine the net sequestration of CO2 by the terrestrial vegetation (SLAND) by considering Eq. (2.1). Therefore, this type of sequestration can be computed as the CO2 remaining from the mass balanced budget, which is expressed as follows:

(2.6)

Here, SLAND is computed from the remainder of the estimates and includes all perturbed carbon from fossil fuels, land-use change, and the CO2 atmospheric growth rate. The computation of SLAND in Eq. (2.6) with the budget from the DGVMS can be used to calculate ELUC by subtracting the impact of land-use changes, which will provide an independent calculation of a consistent SLAND. Thus, it can represent an appropriate understanding of