Sustainable Buildings: An Ever Evolving Target

Abstract:The construction of bridges has been necessary for societies since ancient times, when the communication between and within towns, cities or communities was established. Until recently, the economic factor has been the only one considered in the decision-making of any type of construction process for bridges. However, nowadays, the objective should not be just the construction of bridges, but of sustainable bridges. Economic, social and environmental factors, which form the three pillars of sustainability, have been recently added. These three factors usually have conflicting perspectives. The decision-making process allows the conversion of a judgment into a rational procedure to reach a compromise solution. The aim of this paper is to review different methods and sustainable criteria used for decision-making at each life-cycle phase of a bridge, from design to recycling or demolition. This paper examines 77 journal articles for which different methods have been used. The most used methods are briefly described. In addition, a statistical study was carried out on the Multiple Attribute Decision-making papers reviewed.

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“…These stages are also considered by other authors [6,7]. Our paper reviews these phases and incorporates the last life-cycle phase of a bridge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods Applied to the Sustainable Bridge Design

et al. 2016

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“…Further, they stress the importance of incorporating the environmental perspectives into the early phase planning. The different significance of the emissions occurring now and in the near future, compared to those taking place later, has been recently stated by e.g., Levasseur et al [54] and Dutil et al [55]. Schwietzke et al analyze corn ethanol production with a temporal model, arguing for a higher priority for reducing the early phase emissions [50]-a situation very similar to buildings from the GHG emissions perspective.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are the Greenhouse Gas Implications of New Residential Developments Understood Wrongly?

Heinonen

Säynäjoki

Kuronen³

et al. 2012

Energies

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Built environment carbon reduction strategies materialize predominantly in city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) management, where new residential development appears as one of the key instruments. However, city-level assessments are often incapable of producing data at a community or neighborhood level and thus they may heavily underestimate the emissions from new construction. This paper explores the implications of low-energy residential construction as an instrument of climate change mitigation in the built environment and demonstrates why city-level approaches easily fail to identify the significance of the emissions from construction. We employ a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to demonstrate that, when the temporal allocation of emissions from the construction and use phases is taken into account, construction phase emissions come to have a central role in finding effective GHG mitigation strategies-even when the emissions from all consumption activities during the use phase are included in the assessment. In fact, their role would seem to be so central that new residential construction cannot be utilized as an instrument of city carbon management, even over a relatively long period. While we analyze a case study from Finland, the analysis intends to highlight the situation throughout the globe.

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“…While the implementation of strict operational energy requirements is both important and justified, the motivation behind including this third mitigation action to the study is to draw attention to an important trait of new low-energy construction projects, namely, the significance of construction phase emissions [36]. The authors of this study have referred to the phenomenon as "carbon spike" in previous studies [37].…”

Section: Low-energy New Residential Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Potential of Climate Change Mitigation Actions in Three Different City Types in Finland

et al. 2012

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Abstract:As the effects of global warming have become more evident, ambitious short-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have been set in recent years. Many cities worldwide have adopted an active approach to climate change mitigation, but policy makers are not always knowledgeable of the true effects of their planned mitigation action. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of different mitigation strategies in achieving low-carbon urban communities. The assessment is conducted via means of consumption based hybrid life-cycle assessment, which allows the reduction potential to be analyzed from the perspective of an individual resident of the urban community. The assessed actions represent strategies that are both adopted by the case cities and possible to implement with current best practices in Finland. The four assessed actions comprise: (1) dense urban structure with less private driving; (2) the use of energy production based on renewable sources; (3) new low-energy residential construction; and (4) improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings. The findings show that the effectiveness depends greatly on the type of city, although in absolute terms the most significant reduction potential lies with lowering the fossil fuel dependence of the local energy production.

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Sustainable Buildings: An Ever Evolving Target

Cited by 68 publications

References 96 publications

A Review of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods Applied to the Sustainable Bridge Design

A Review of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods Applied to the Sustainable Bridge Design

Are the Greenhouse Gas Implications of New Residential Developments Understood Wrongly?

Assessing the Potential of Climate Change Mitigation Actions in Three Different City Types in Finland

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