Talk Overview

A recent study gave us the disconcerting news that as a global society we are exceeding 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries that maintain the stability and resilience of our Earth.  That means we aren’t just pumping too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are also overloading our watercourses with nutrients, polluting the world with synthetic chemicals, over-extracting natural resources and interfering with precious ecosystems.  Coupled with this, our understanding of the interrelatedness of all of these systems is increasing.  We now know we won’t save our planet by reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone, we need to support and preserve biodiversity and global ecosystems.

Construction provides vital infrastructure to allow the social needs of the people on our planet to be met, and will be essential if we are to achieve our sustainable development goals.  However, the built environment also contributes 40% of energy and process-related CO2 emissions, is responsible for 50% of extracted materials and generates 35% of waste.

This TEDx talk will reflect on how construction will radically change in coming decades and will reimagine a world where construction provides not just social benefits, but also environmental advantages.

About the Speaker

Siobhan Cox is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Civil Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast and a Chartered Civil Engineer.  She has extensive experience assessing whole life cycle environmental impacts for novel construction products and has worked with construction companies undertaking whole life carbon calculations, identifying embodied carbon reductions for both buildings and infrastructure and calculating carbon emissions from construction operations. She is also a co-investigator on the Horizon 2020 funded UPSURGE project which aims to implement nature based solutions for regenerative development of cities.  She recently developed a new module for undergraduate civil engineers at QUB that considers how the work of civil engineers will change as a result of our changing environment. 

Prior to completing a PhD on the regeneration of contaminated land, Siobhan worked in engineering consultancy, designing and undertaking environmental impact assessments for waste management facilities and undertaking contaminated land risk assessments, and brings this experience to her research at QUB.