Tripp Shealy

Well-Endowed Rating Systems: How Modified Defaults Can Lead to More Sustainable Performance

AbstractRating systems are often used as design/decision tools to evaluate, grade, and reward infrastructure projects that meet sustainability criteria such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, preservation of wildlife habitat, and accessibility to community cultural resources. Embedded within any such rating system is choice architecture, which refers to the way information is presented to a decision maker. This research examines the impact on design choices of changes to defaults in the choice architecture of the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure. Currently, the default score in each category of Envision is zero points. Points are earned by improving upon industry norms. To test the impact of changing these defaults, participants (senior-level and graduate students) randomly received either the current Envision version or a modified version with a higher default score, endowing participants with points in sustainability. All participants used their randomly assigned rating syst...

Using Framing Effects to Inform More Sustainable Infrastructure Design Decisions

AbstractDecision aids, ranging from rating systems to design software to regulatory standards, guide the design and evaluation of infrastructure projects. To present the information in these decision aids, there must first be some options such as, attributes are or are not presented, and, just as in other domains, these factors are likely to influence decisions in infrastructure development. The authors of this paper seek to better understand how choice structures influence engineering decisions. Prospect theory, which is well established in the behavioral sciences, asserts that people tend to think of possible outcomes relative to their starting point, not the resulting end point. For instance, framing a decision outcome as a loss in value (rather than a gain) can reduce the decision makers’ acceptance of risk and, in turn, lead to more conservative outcomes. To measure framing effects in engineering decisions, this paper uses the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure, which aims to help ...

Choice Architecture as a Strategy to Encourage Elegant Infrastructure Outcomes

AbstractInfrastructure that meets users’ needs with less complexity can satisfy growing demand and relieve system pressures. Such outcomes are defined as elegant. Unfortunately, social and cognitive biases can inhibit infrastructure stakeholders from achieving these outcomes. In other fields, similar biases are overcome with well-designed choice architecture, which considers how the presentation of choices effects the decisions that are ultimately made. Using a metasynthesis research approach, this article describes cognitive biases that can inhibit elegant infrastructure and then presents strategies to mitigate these biases with choice architecture interventions. The emphasis here is on high-impact decisions with cost-effective and plausible choice architecture interventions. This systematic merging of behavioral science and infrastructure systems is meant to provide readers with the background and examples needed to investigate choice architecture as a strategy to influence the infrastructure outcomes t...

Career Outcome Expectations Related to Sustainability among Students Intending to Major in Civil Engineering

AbstractLearning more about the career outcome expectations of students interested in civil engineering can help identify gaps between their expectations and sustainability challenges. The authors used data from two national surveys to compare students interested in civil engineering and other engineering disciplines. Those interested in civil engineering are more likely to address such sustainability topics as environmental degradation, water supply, and climate change. However, civil engineering students are less likely to have outcome expectations related to disease and saving lives. Particularly, female students interested in civil engineering have similar expectations to males but also hope to address poverty and opportunities for women and minorities. The gaps in outcome expectations related to disease and saving lives are troubling for a profession that is so instrumental in providing, for example, clean water and safe shelter. Showing the connection between societal needs and civil engineering may...

BIM Energy Modeling: Case Study of a Teaching Module for Sustainable Design and Construction Courses

AbstractEnergy modeling (EM) facilitates analysis and comparison of energy use across design configurations. EM software can serve as a decision-making tool for professionals throughout various stages of building delivery. This case study describes methods to expose students, who are enrolled in a sustainable design and construction course, to building information modeling (BIM)–based EM capabilities and limitations. The case study focuses on documenting the implementation of a teaching module focused on energy modeling in which students modify location, insulation, and window glazing of a single family home preprogramed into BIM software. After instructor demonstration, students perform an EM analysis for additional locations as homework and answer a question set based on their EM results. The results indicate that students had minor issues interpreting the EM results because they did not fully examine the outputs produced from the energy model to inform their answers on the teaching module homework assi...

Half of Students Interested in Civil Engineering Do Not Believe in Anthropogenic Climate Change

AbstractThis article describes beliefs related to human-caused climate change and predictors of these beliefs among students intending to pursue civil engineering. Based on a nationally distributed...

High school experiences and climate change beliefs of first year college students in the United States

Abstract Climate change has not been well understood by high school students in the US and the topic is often connected to misconceptions, which is especially damaging since accurate understandings of the concepts are strongly predictive of intent to do something about it. We use data from a national (US) survey of first year college students to identify high school experiences which correlate with the belief that climate change is caused by human activities. In-class coverage of climate change is less predictive of belief than time spent on science homework or science-themed extracurricular activities. These correlations suggest that simply covering climate change in class may not necessarily lead to greater belief in the scientific consensus. While deeper understanding is a worthy goal, the results indicate that, when it comes to high school science education, social factors such as the process and culture of education are also important for belief in climate change. These finding aligns with previous research about college students, which suggest student activities are more strongly correlated with student viewpoints than professor beliefs. Given the potential for curricula to become politicized these finding suggests an alternative route to achieve climate change education goals.

Beyond rationality in engineering design for sustainability

If you try to ensure long-term human well-being within the limits of the natural world, then you design for sustainability. This Review organizes research describing how cognitive biases can hinder and help engineering design for sustainability. For example, designers might overlook climate change implications because of nearsighted thinking, a bias which can be overcome by vividly imagining the future. For researchers, this Review illuminates needs at the convergence of decision science and engineering design. For designers (that is, all of us), the Review promises new routes to sustainability, through changes to decision environments and through insights into our own design thinking.Ensuring human well-being within the limits of the natural world over time requires designing for sustainability. This Review analyses the extent to which cognitive biases can either limit or help such design. It also suggests possible changes to the decision settings of engineers as new ways to achieve sustainability.

Case-based flipped classroom approach to teach sustainable infrastructure and decision-making

ABSTRACT Design, engineering, and construction for more sustainable infrastructure involve complex decisions with considerable risk and uncertainty. To prepare students for such challenges, agencies and organizations like the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, American Council for Construction Education, and American Society of Civil Engineers are placing more emphasis on complex engineering problems. The case-based module in this study aims to address such needs through a constructivism framework, integrating problem-based learning, a flipped classroom, and transdisciplinary content on behavioral science. The module presents a case about a wastewater project. Team-based learning involves proposing the placement of holding-tanks, first based on cost and later for an extreme flood. Three decision-making concepts (risk aversion, regulatory focus, take-the-best heuristic) are then taught. Students wrote individual reflections relating these concepts to the case. Initially, students perceived cost as the biggest barrier. After the module, students broadened their consideration to include risk aversion and regulatory focus theory. Students were more likely to consider resilience in their design and reflect on how their design would influence the community. The implications of these results are that teaching transdisciplinary concepts that bridge engineering and behavioral science can broaden students’ understanding of sustainability and change perceptions of the barriers for more sustainable infrastructure. The module is available through the Center for Sustainable Engineering repository.