Abstract
Environmental evaluation of the built environment has rapidly improved in our decade. As the architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) industry is proved to have a high share in resource demand, the environmental impact of construction activities draws attention of many parties. Starting from high-performance buildings to green rated examples, optimizing both the performance and profitability of AEC products has been the main goal of researchers and practitioners. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a comprehensive method developed for this purpose.
Higher rates of waste and emissions put forward the fact that analysing and controlling the environmental impacts in construction sector is important. Carbon footprint assessment of buildings is one of the main methods utilized for this purpose. In order to provide this kind of evaluation, environmental data on materials and processes regarding the construction industry are needed. However, available data on construction materials are fragmented, hard-to-reach and even harder to confirm. In the absence of national databases, the quality of data in LCA studies must clearly be displayed, and a certain level of validation is required for reliable results.
This study aims to develop a validation system to ensure the quality of data in carbon-related LCA studies. The framework introduces a hybrid life cycle methodology which is based on data quality. Different environmental impact assessment methods are utilized depending on the quality score that is determined by pedigree matrix. The pedigree matrix is improved with a weighting factor which enables flexibility and higher precision while evaluating available data.
The use of the developed system has been demonstrated in an LCA analysis of an office building. The carbon footprint of the building components is calculated with an LCA software. As a final step, the results are compared with the impacts of a number of office buildings in the literature for validation purposes. The proposed framework suggests that data quality must explicitly be displayed and can also be used as a guidance for impact assessment.
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Kayaçetin, N.C., Tanyer, A.M. (2018). Analysis of Embodied Carbon in Buildings Supported by a Data Validation System. In: Pomponi, F., De Wolf, C., Moncaster, A. (eds) Embodied Carbon in Buildings. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72796-7_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72796-7_7
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