Balanced Evaluation of Structural and Environmental Performances in Building Design

Abstract

The design of new buildings, and even more the rehabilitation of existing ones, needs to satisfy modern criteria in terms of energy efficiency and environmental performance, within the context of adequate safety requirements. Tackling all these needs at the same time is cumbersome, as demonstrated by several experiences during recent earthquakes, where the improvement of energy performance vanished by seismic-induced damages. The costs of energy retrofitting must be added to the normal losses caused by the earthquake. Even though the minimum safety requirements are met (no collapse), the damage due to earthquake might be enough to waste the investment made to improve energy efficiency. Since these measures are often facilitated by corresponding incentives, the use of public funding is not cost effective. The application of the existing impact assessment methods is typically performed at the end of the architectural and structural design process. Thus, no real optimisation can be achieved, because a good structural solution could correspond to a poor environmental performance and vice versa. The proposed Sustainable Structural Design method (SSD) considers both environmental and structural parameters in the life cycle perspective. The integration of environmental data in the structural performance is the focus of the method. Structural performances are considered in a probabilistic approach, through the introduction of a simplified Performance Based Assessment method. Finally, the SSD method is implemented with a case-study of an office-occupancy building, both for precast and cast-in-situ structural systems, with the aim to find the best solution in terms of sustainability and structural performance for the case at hand.

An Integrated Method to Evaluate Sustainability for Vulnerable Buildings Addressing Life Cycle Embodied Impacts and Resource Use

“…This has revealed that existing building stock could not provide sufficient energy saving; most crucially, this expansive stock continues deteriorating, which increases vulnerability to seismic motions [21]. For this reason, Feroldi et al [22], Mora et al [23], Marini et al [21], Georgescu et al [24], Basirico and Enea [25], De Vita et al [26], Mora et al [27], and Lamperti et al [28] have worked to increase structural safety through energy retrofitting mostly focused on building envelopes that provide thermal comfort. However, these studies do not foresee merging the assessment of structural and environmental performance [29] while excluding the embodied carbon and energy caused by structural deficiencies in reported life cycle analyses.…”

A Life Cycle Framework for the Identification of Optimal Building Renovation Strategies Considering Economic and Environmental Impacts

“…Within the European Pilot Project titled "Integrated techniques for the seismic strengthening and the energy efficiency of existing buildings" and coordinated by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) [4], the sustainable structural design (SSD) method proposed by Lamperti Tornaghi et al [41] is being adapted and further developed for application to the case of integrated assessment and retrofitting of the existing European building stock. In such methodology, comparative cost-benefit analyses of different integrated interventions consider not only the seismic damage/retrofitting and energy consumption of buildings, but also the corresponding carbon emissions, which are converted into an assumed equivalent monetary cost.…”

Major European Stressors and Potential of Available Tools for Assessment of Urban and Buildings Resilience

“…Though climate change is a long and slowly progressive process that could be handled with constant adaptations; an earthquake is an acute shock that strikes suddenly and cannot be foreseen, and facing this disaster is necessarily a case of quick response and effective recovery strategies [14,49]. Green open spaces contribute to enhance climate resilience, reducing the phenomena of heat island in the urban areas.…”