Yinhai Wang's group is working to collect, store, organize and analyze the vast amount of traffic data that exists for the Seattle area.

University of Washington

“PacTrans will focus on developing sustainable solutions for the diverse transportation needs of the Pacific Northwest,” said director Yinhai Wang, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering.

The center’s work could have helped people get around during last week’s storm, he said. New ways to analyze existing data that combines weather conditions, traffic volumes, vehicle speeds, road surface conditions, and incidents can extract information that helps travelers choose the best routes, and traffic operators make optimal decisions, Wang said.

“As transportation becomes a more critical issue for urban and rural environments, it’s very timely that we’ve won this award to help develop modern transportation systems,” said Matt O’Donnell, dean of the UW College of Engineering.

The consortium, one of the Transportation Department’s 10 newly funded regional centers, will represent Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska. Institutional partners are Oregon State University, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Idaho and Washington State University.

PacTrans will fund research that addresses the broad themes of safety and sustainability, in projects such as:

• Assessing the effectiveness of statewide bans on driving and texting.
• Using video and traffic-monitoring data to better understand how vehicles, transit, pedestrians and bicyclists travel on arterial streets.
• Conducting a survey to measure the success of various driving-reduction programs.
• Developing a system to manage roadside slopes at risk of collapsing and impeding traffic during earthquakes or storms.

Linda Boyle with a car that measures a driver's attention, behavior and performance for her research on driver distraction.

Matt Hagen, July 2011

“Transportation research and development is one of the great challenges facing our state as we seek to remain competitive now and in the future,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “I applaud this critical investment and congratulate the University of Washington for securing the resources we need to keep transportation research a top priority.”

The center seeks to capitalize on the Pacific Northwest’s environmental awareness, rapid population growth and use of advanced technologies, Wang said. Research projects will aim to address driver and pedestrian safety, traffic congestion, roadway infrastructure construction and repair, vehicle emissions, mobility for the elderly and disabled, and import and exports of goods.

“As the fourth largest exporting state in the nation, Washington knows the importance of modernized transportation infrastructure to keep our economy moving,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. “The University of Washington is well positioned to develop the sustainable solutions that will shape 21^st-century transportation infrastructure.”

OSU's bicycle simulator is used to study interactions between drivers and cyclists.

Oregon State University

The UW-based TransNow was among 59 centers to be phased out last year. The new award will maintain the UW’s role as a regional hub for transportation research. PacTrans will collaborate with the newly funded federal centers at Portland State University and the University of Idaho. It also will work closely with the statewide Washington State Transportation Center based at the UW.

The grant is part of $77 million in DOT grants to 22 University Transportation Centers, involving a total of 121 universities, to advance research and education programs that address national transportation challenges.

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For more information, contact Wang at 206-616-2696 or yinhai@uw.edu. More on the grant competition is at http://utc.dot.gov/about/grants_competitions/2011/

Glenn Crellin

Earlier this month, the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at WSU merged with the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the UW.

Glenn Crellin, 61, who directed the WSU center, has become associate director of research for the Runstad Center, which is part of the UW College of Built Environments. He brings years of experience in residential real estate to Runstad, which has heavily focused on commercial real estate.

Crellin also hopes to leverage academic research, offering it in white papers, a newsletter and other formats more accessible to real estate professionals.

“We want to make sure that industry can take advantage of the work we do,” Crellin said.

“This merger elevates the role of research at Runstad,” said George Rolfe, who directs the Runstad Center. “Glenn also has a broad reputation, and there has never been a more important time for the Center to understand the economics of residential real estate. This merger makes us more relevant in the largest real estate market in the Pacific Northwest.”

Crellin, who holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Maryland, became interested in residential real estate in the early 1970s, when asked to forecast housing starts for the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Later, at Arthur Young & Company, Crellin advised government clients on economic impact statements, then spent16 years as a research economist for the National Association of Realtors.

He liked research on the home market. “Residential housing touches everybody, whether they live in apartment or a single-family home,” Crellin said.

Runstad board members are pleased about the blended centers. “This merger will give the Runstad Center a well-rounded research platform,” said Larry Remmers, board chairman, who is also senior vice president and manager of commercial real estate for Wells Fargo Bank in Portland, Ore.

“With changes in the economy and in academics, as well as the rise and energy of the Runstad Center, the merger makes sense. The synergies between residential and commercial studies could mean that two and two equals five,” said Seattle commercial real estate attorney Anne Lawler, who was chairwoman of the Washington Center board of trustees and now serves on the Runstad board.

The WSU center’s website, as well as its research, will be available until transition to the Runstad Center is complete.

The Runstad Center supports the master of science in real estate degree offered by the Department of Urban Design and Planning. It is a two-year program that includes courses in finance, investment, development and sustainability.

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For additional information contact Crellin at crellin@uw.edu or 206-685-8020; Rolfe at rolfe@uw.edu or 206-543-6918.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct now carries traffic along Seattle's waterfront. It is slated for demolition.

Washington State Department of Transportation

Debate about how to replace Seattle’s deteriorating waterfront highway has centered on uncertainties in the project’s price tag. Drilling a deep-bore tunnel and building an underground highway is estimated to cost around $4 billion, but some worry the final price could be higher, as it was for Boston’s infamous Big Dig.

University of Washington statisticians have, for the first time, explored a different subject of uncertainty, namely surrounding how much commuters might benefit from the project. They found that relying on surface streets would likely have less impact on travel times than previously reported, and that different options’ effects on commute times are not well known.

The research, conducted in 2009, was originally intended as an academic exercise looking at how to assess uncertainties in travel-time projections from urban transportation and land-use models. But the paper is being published amid renewed debate about the future of Seattle’s waterfront thoroughfare.

“In early 2009 it was decided there would be a tunnel, and we said, ‘Well, the issue is settled but it’s still of academic interest,’” said co-author Adrian Raftery, a UW statistics professor. “Now it has all bubbled up again.”

The study was cited last month in a report by the Seattle Department of Transportation reviewing the tunnel’s impact. It is now available online, and will be published in the July issue of the journal Transportation Research: Part A.

Researchers looked at eight routes that currently include the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

University of Washington

The study found that simply erasing the structure in 2010 would increase travel times a decade later for the eight routes that currently include the viaduct by 1.5 minutes to 9.2 minutes, with an average increase of 6 minutes. The uncertainty was fairly large, with zero change within the 95 percent confidence range for all the viaduct routes, and more than 20 minutes increase as a reasonable projection in a few cases. In the short term some routes along Interstate 5 were slightly slower, but by 2020 the travel times returned to today’s levels.

“This indicates that over time removing the structure would increase commute times for people who use the viaduct by about six minutes, although there’s quite a bit of uncertainty about exactly how much,” Raftery said. “In the rest of the region, on I-5, there’s no indication that it would increase commute times at all.”

The study also considered the effects on 14 routes, shown here, that do not include the viaduct.

University of Washington

The UW team in late 2009 ran the same travel model but added an urban land-use component that allows people and businesses to adapt over time – for instance by moving, switching jobs or relocating businesses.

It also included a statistical method that puts error bars around the travel-time projections.

“There is a big interest among transportation planners in putting an uncertainty range around modeling results,” said co-author Hana Ševčíková, a UW research scientist who ran the model.

“Often in policy discussions there’s interest in either one end or the other of an interval: How bad could things be if we don’t make an investment, or if we do make an investment, are we sure that it’s necessary?” Raftery said. “The ends of the interval can give you a sense of that.”

The UW study used a method called Bayesian statistics to combine computer models with actual data. Researchers used 2000 and 2005 land-use data and 2005 commute travel times to fine-tune the model. Bayesian statistics improves the model’s accuracy and provides an uncertainty range around the model’s projections.

The study used UrbanSim, an urban simulation model developed by co-author and former UW faculty member Paul Waddell, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The model starts running in the year 2000, the viaduct is taken down in 2010 and the study focuses on peak morning commutes in the year 2020.

Despite renewed discussion, the authors are not taking a position on the debate.

“This is a scientific assessment. People could well say that six minutes is a lot, and it’s worth whatever it takes [to avoid it],” Raftery said. “To some extent it comes down to a value judgment, factoring in the economic and environmental impacts.”

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For more information, contact Raftery at 206-543-4505 or raftery@stat.washington.edu.

“Architects like color-changing windows such as the one developed at the UW because they don’t want to use mechanical blinds,” said principal investigator Minoru Taya, a UW professor of mechanical engineering. “Now we have developed a switchable dye that is not only blocking sunlight, but harvesting sunlight.”

The proposed window has sensors that detect the conditions and adjust the transparency of the top portion of the window. At the same time, incoming solar rays (red) would be converted to electricity (dotted red line). Image credit: University of Washington

The window includes a compound developed at the UW that can darken on command – either automatically in response to light levels, or as the user adjusts the settings. This project will add a compound that converts incoming solar energy to electricity, to be used immediately or stored in a lithium-ion battery in the window’s frame. The solar panel can even harvest energy from artificial lights, so at night it can absorb energy from the room’s lights.

"In addition to being energy efficient, these windows will improve the quality of life inside these buildings," said Christopher Meek, a UW research assistant professor of architecture and member of the UW Integrated Design Lab. "One example is that the window technology will reduce glare and increase visual comfort, much like certain eyeglass lens respond to sky brightness."

Project collaborators are:

• Taya, who will oversee the project using his technology for changing window color and capturing solar rays.
• Meek, who will look at how to integrate the technology with building design and use local conditions to increase the comfort of the occupants.

• Joyce Cooper, a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering, who will do a life-cycle assessment of the technology. She will consider long-term impacts of using different materials and investigate options for recycling.

• Yasuo Kuga, a UW professor of electrical engineering, who will build sensors that detect when a person is nearby. He will also explore how the technology might affect transmission of cell phone and other wireless signals through the window – an important consideration for modern buildings.

• Christine Luscombe, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who will develop new versions of the compound that can convert more of the incoming sunlight into electricity.

For the past decade, Taya has been developing smart windows that darken on command, similar to eyeglasses that dim in sunlight except that the user can adjust the settings. His approach to the technology is novel because it requires very little energy and uses organic materials, meaning it can be built from cheap materials at low temperatures.

The UW window can adjust in less than 30 seconds from an almost transparent pane to one that blocks 99 percent of incoming light. The electrochromic pane uses a small amount of electricity only during the color change, and can survive more than 100,000 transitions. Photo credit: University of Washington

Another focus of Taya’s research is using organic materials, rather than silicon, to develop solar cells. He recently led a project funded by the U.S. Air Force to develop lightweight solar cells for use in airplanes. Such cells could power the cabin without having to run heavy copper wires from the engine, or power lightweight autonomous flying vehicles.

“This is maybe the cheapest way of making a solar cell,” Taya said. “The principle is the same as photosynthesis – the solar ray hits, the natural dye is excited and it emits electrons. It’s very similar to photosynthesis, except the key dye is not chlorophyll, it’s a human-made dye.”

The new project is a fusion of the two technologies, where the same dye provides both color switching and solar energy harvesting functions. These organic switchable dyes still have only 2 percent to 3 percent efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity, compared to 10 percent for commercial solar panels, but are attractive because they are potentially cheap, flexible and more versatile than existing solar panels.

In the proposed window, when the colored coating is activated the organic dye would trap incoming solar energy and convert it to electricity.

Researchers will use the four-year science foundation grant to refine the design and build a prototype.

“This is still considered a dreamy project. It has a long way to go to commercialization,” Taya acknowledged. “But if it’s realized, we are toward a zero-energy building, a truly autonomous building.”

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Organized as the Carbon Leadership Forum, the group is hosted by the UW College of Built Environments.

The standards are expected to help people in the building industry meet the 2030 Challenge for Products. Launched today, the challenge calls for dramatically reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions related to manufacture and transportation of construction materials.

"Without good data, clear standards and industry collaboration, we will not be able to accurately predict and reduce the carbon impact of building materials and products,” said Kate Simonen, a UW assistant professor of architecture and executive director of the Carbon Forum. “The 2030 Challenge for Products provides critical leadership to motivate development of low-carbon industries and rigorous environmental performance standards.

“Ambitious targets for carbon reduction cannot be met by increasing energy efficiency alone,” Simonen added. “Designers and builders are missing key information they need to evaluate and specify low-carbon products.”

The 2030 Challenge for Products emerged from Architecture 2030, a nonprofit focused on reducing greenhouse gases emitted by buildings and construction products. According to Architecture 2030, the building sector is responsible for almost half of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. with, 5 percent to 8 percent of total U.S. energy consumption and associated emissions tied to manufacturing and transporting building products.

Architecture 2030 launched the initial 2030 Challenge five years ago, focusing on operational efficiency of buildings, but along the way, people realized that the life cycle of building products is crucially important.

The 2030 Challenge for Products directs that designers specify and manufacturers develop building products to meet gradually more stringent standards. Challenge organizers aim for a 50-percent reduction in carbon-equivalent footprint by 2030. To begin making that happen, the Carbon Leadership Forum will spend the next two years developing industry standards and product averages. As part of their work, forum members will devise product category rules to enable comparisons of materials from different manufacturers.

Webcor Builders, a general contractor based in San Mateo, Calif., and Climate Earth, an environmental accounting firm based in San Francisco, initiated the Carbon Leadership Forum.

Design firms supporting the Forum include EHDD Architecture of San Francisco; Loisos + Ubbelohde Architecture and Energy of Alameda, Calif; and Design AVEnues of Pacifica, Calif. Structural engineers include Magnusson and Klemencic Associates (MKA) of Seattle and Tipping Mar and Associates of Berkeley, Calif. Manufacturers include Serious Materials of Sunnyvale, Calif. and U.S. Concrete Inc.’s northern California division, Central Concrete.  Building industry nonprofits include the Ecological Building Network of San Rafael, Calif. and the Northern California Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council.  In addition, the Forum includes Navitas Capital, a Berkeley based venture capital firm.

The forum will add more firms, industry organizations, research institutions, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in coming months.

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For more information, contact Kate Simonen at ksimonen@uw.edu or 206-685-7282; Steven Fruhwirth at sfruhwirth@webcor.com or 650-349-2727; Frankie Ridolfi at frankie@climateearth.com or 415-391-2725.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has announced that University of Washington researchers, with the architectural firm NBBJ, will receive a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to extend nationally a model that reduces hospital energy use by 60 percent.

The work of the UW team reflects a fundamental game change. Once upon a time, it was enough to create a building that was energy efficient. Now the goal is net zero: the structure creates as much energy as it uses.

"Hospitals and health facilities are second only to fast-food restaurants in energy consumption. They consume approximately 4 percent of all energy used in the U.S., so lowering the amount is very important," said Joel Loveland, a professor of architecture who directs the Integrated Design Lab at the university. He and Heather Burpee, a UW research associate in architecture, lead Target 100, which is named for an energy use index and reflects the goal of significantly increasing energy efficiency.

Together with experts who aided the initial research, Loveland and Burpee will model energy strategies for hospitals in Seattle; Miami; Phoenix; San Francisco; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Chicago and Minneapolis.

The UW team's initial strategies were included by NBBJ in the new Montlake Tower under construction at the UW Medical Center. Also, ZGF Architects is considering more extensive use of these strategies for the patient tower addition to Seattle Children's Hospital. Mahlum Architects is considering them for its Living Building hospital for Peace Island Medical Center in Friday Harbor.

The work addresses the 2030 Challenge instituted by Architecture 2030, an environmental advocacy group. Architects, engineers and building owners are adopting the goal, which targets a greater reduction in energy use every five years. Buildings constructed by 2030 are to be net-zero energy consumers. For buildings that will begin operating between 2010 and 2015, the goal is a 60 percent reduction from standard operational use.

The UW team's research so far demonstrates that there is little additional cost -- about 2 percent -- for their strategies.

Part of the group's work is based on contemporary Scandinavian hospital designs that consistently use one quarter to one half the energy of their American counterparts. Along with energy efficiency, Scandinavian strategies include abundant use of daylight from windows that open and close.

The UW researchers found heating the biggest target for energy reduction. In the U.S., more than 50 percent of hospital energy is used to heat space or water. It's ironic, says the researchers' report, because study of a 225-bed hospital in the Puget Sound region found that "hospitals generate enough heat from internal mechanical or electrical sources to need no additional heat until the outside temperature drops below 20 degrees." And in the Seattle region, that kind of cold rarely happens.

This new kind of hospital integrates goal setting, energy modeling, and the means to verify performance from initial conception to building operation. It also targets three key systems with a number of strategies:

Architecture:

• Increase use of daylighting.

• Use solar heating when possible.

• Balance heat loss and environmental comfort with high-performance equipment.

Building systems:

• Separate tempering of air temperature from ventilation air.

• Optimize heat recovery from interior spaces and large internal equipment.

• Turn off equipment not in use.

Plant systems:

• Use advanced heat recovery at the central plant with heat pumping or enhanced heat recovery chillers and highly efficient boilers. Also use ground-sourced heat exchange.

Researchers emphasize that their strategies work in concert: to get that 60 percent increase in energy efficiency, the means must be bundled.

The UW award builds on health design research at the College of Built Environments' Integrated Design Lab for Puget Sound.  Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, through its BetterBricks initiative, has supported the lab's work the last four years.

The energy department grant is one of 58 totaling more than $76 million funneled from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The goal is more energy-efficient buildings and training for technicians who maintain commercial buildings.

Along with Loveland and Burpee, the research team includes Solarc Architecture and Engineering Inc., NBBJ, TBD Consultants Inc., Cameron MacAllister Group, Mahlum, and Mortenson Construction. Substantial matching support comes from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance BetterBricks program.

To read "Targeting 100," go to http://www.betterbricks.com/graphics/assets/documents/Targeting100_ExecutiveSummary_Final.pdf

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For more information, contact Loveland at 206-616-6566 or loveland@uw.edu; Burpee at 206-616-6566 or burpeeh@uw.edu.