Research Paper Published in Top Journal in Area of Environmental Studies by Huang Beijia

Funded by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and USST, Huang Beijia’s stay at the Center of Industrial Ecology of Forest & Environment School, Yale University has yielded a fruitful result, namely Huang’s publication of an article titled “Building Material Use and Associated Environmental Impacts in China 2000-2015” as the first author in a top journal in the relevant area that is called Environmental Science and Technology (EST, impact factor 6.653), and she did this with her colleagues abroad. EST boasts the greatest influence all over the globe in terms of environmental science and engineering as well as is the number-one journal in the same area concerning citation index.

This research did a classification and quantitative study on the consumption amount of 9 types of building materials from 23 provinces or municipalities in China between 2000 and 2015. Using building material intensity data and life cycle inventories, this study evaluates the embodied environmental impacts of building materials, and sheds light on methods to reduce environmental impacts from such aspects as energy efficiency, raw material selection and the manufacturing process.

One of the co-authors of the article Edgar Hertwitch is the Director of the Center of Industrial Ecology, Yale University and the former President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE); Tomer Fishman and Niko Hereen are also co-authors and are well-known experts in the sustainable development of architecture. According to Huang, she has reaped a good harvest during her stay abroad in terms of academic exchanges, and the publication was only possible after in-depth discussions with co-authors about research methodology and writing techniques.

Huang has been a teacher at the School of Environment and Architecture, USST since 2012. Her research interests mainly include environment evaluation, planning and management, and low-carbon and sustainable development, with her research narrowed down to the sustainable development of architecture and evaluation and planning of energy conservation strategies in recent years.