Abstract

Net-zero commitments are pushing higher education institutions to measure their environmental impact more rigorously. RIT Dubai has aligned its sustainability targets with the UAE Net Zero 2050 initiative, and earlier greenhouse gas reporting identified commuting and electricity as the campus’s dominant emission sources, with transportation modelled only from city-level estimates. This thesis develops an individual-level, use-phase Life Cycle Assessment of transportation at RIT Dubai across the entire campus community of 2,795 members in seven segments: local and international students, faculty and staff, and the contracted service staff who travel to campus daily. A transportation Life Cycle Inventory was built from institutional records held by Admissions, the Transport Office, Human Resources, and Facilities Management, supplemented by a commuting behaviour survey, and was processed in line with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 guidance, with multi-impact characterisation. The model produces a total transportation footprint of 4,112,682 kg CO₂e for the 2025–26 academic year, an average of 1,471 kg per person per year, and this unadjusted figure is the study’s central result. Applying a +20% air-conditioning fuel penalty to ground transport gives a climate-adjusted estimate of 4.77 million kg, and a Monte Carlo analysis of the remaining uncertain inputs places that value between 4.40 and 5.19 million kg with 95% probability. Emissions are heavily concentrated: the 12.1% of local students commuting more than 100 km account for 51.3% of local student commuting emissions, a concentration summarised by a Gini coefficient of 0.564. With on-campus solar generation now supplying 23.7% of campus electricity consumption, transportation stands at 2.4 times the electricity footprint and has become the campus’s largest emission source. A segment-based emission coefficient model was developed so that future emissions can be estimated from population composition alone, and sensitivity analysis identifies enrolment geography as the strongest single driver: one hundred additional Abu Dhabi students would raise the total by 14.4%, while the three highest-impact interventions applied together would reduce it by 32.2%. Global warming accounts for only about a third of the total environmental burden measured, which supports the value of a multi-impact approach over carbon-only accounting. The method is replicable and can be reused by other universities across the UAE and the wider region.

Publication Date

8-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Engineering Management (ME)

Department, Program, or Center

Engineering

Advisor

Ghalib Kahwaji

Advisor/Committee Member

Dua Weraikat

Advisor/Committee Member

Haneen Abuzaid

Campus

RIT Dubai

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