Toward LCA-lite: A Simplified Tool to Easily Apply LCA Logic at the Early Design Stage of Building in Australia

Tabrizi, Toktam Bashirzadeh; Brambilla, Arianna

doi:10.14207/ejsd.2019.v8n5p383

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(66 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Easy/rapid interpretation of LCA results is critical to quantify environmental performance during design [47,57,58]. Depending on the tools used, LCA outputs might include numerical, graphical or 3D visualisations.…”

Section: Lca Outputs and Interpretation Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Prideaux

Crawford

Allacker

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Buildings and construction are among the leading contributors towards global greenhouse gas emissions, resource demands, waste, and pollution, placing a massive strain on our natural environment. Until recently, mitigation strategies have primarily concentrated on reductions in operational energy, failing to account for embodied effects; those associated with the manufacture of construction goods, construction activities, and end of life considerations. In recent years, there has been an increased recognition of the growing significance of embodied effects, and the opportunity to reduce these during the building design process. However, life cycle assessment (LCA) tools used to quantify environmental flows are often perceived as being too time-consuming or complicated to incorporate into prevalent building design workflows. The aim of this study was to review approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process, including the LCA tools and environmental data used to achieve this. A systematic review was conducted of academic and grey literature. The study identified three main approaches for incorporating LCA into the building design process: simplified LCA, detailed LCA and incremental LCA. Further analysis of these approaches was conducted, based on case studies. General attributes and design considerations were identified, and mapped against the early design, and detailed design stages. A wide variety of LCA approaches were reviewed, responding to various challenges for incorporating LCA into the building design process, with no singular approach able to completely satisfy all requirements. Findings highlight the lack of incremental LCA approaches, and the need for further research to understand how LCA approaches can be better used to improve the embodied environmental performance of buildings during the design process.

show abstract

Section: Lca Outputs and Interpretation Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The building design process is highly iterative, and typically moves through different levels of detailfrom abstract to more specific -as design stages progress [57]. LCA conducted during the design process should address this changing level of data resolution.…”

Section: Aligning Lca With the Building Design Stagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Prideaux

Crawford

Allacker

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although the highest energy use of a building is recorded in the operation phase, increasing energy efficiency requires attention to embodied energy from the design phase of the building. Proposals for architects and engineers to assess sustainability in the initial design phase include using more integrative approaches based on standardized indicators, identifying the most relevant parameters, and simplifying tools (Tabrizi and Brambilla 2019;Rahla et al 2019).…”

Section: Gaps and Research Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A methodological approach to evaluate structural building projects through the Environmental Economic Index

Romo-Orozco

Contreras-Jiménez

Armenta

et al. 2021

Clean Techn Environ Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The construction industry has a relevant social and economic role and has become critical to improving global sustainability. This industry contributes significantly to global CO 2 emissions due to embodied energy and operating energy. There are methodologies to assess them, but they lack integration with other variables such as safety and costs in buildings. These methodologies are complex and costly in economic and human resources, accentuated in small-scale building projects. This research proposes the Environmental Economic Index (EEI) to evaluate structural building projects and support decisionmaking, based on a simplified method that exchanges parametric design and project management information without requiring specialized knowledge. Its development was based on modeling different structures for the same building subjected to several operational and lateral loads, with structural concrete and structural steel; the case study was developed in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The concrete structure with seismic actions had a better result when comparing it with the other structural alternatives; for the same loads, the concrete structures were more economical; when modifying the loads to include seismic actions, the costs had an increase that is not significant when compared with the potential losses. Concrete structures would generate lower emissions and energy consumption quantified up to the construction stage regarding environmental impacts. The contribution of this work is to develop a simplified methodology to evaluate structural projects in the design phase, which integrates economic, environmental, and safety variables and supports decision-making by designers and real estate developers.

show abstract

“…However, what is considered simple by the intended tool users highly depends on the existing common workflows in a company or a country. Tabrizi and Brambilla (2019) developed a simplified LCA tool for buildings in Australia while Naneva et al (2020) developed a simplified LCA workflow and a tool following a Swiss cost structure that was highly appreciated by Swiss construction companies, for example. However, it is probably useless to stakeholders in other countries having different building decomposition strategies or internal workflows.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Framework for User Centric LCA Tool Development for Early Planning Stages of Buildings

Hollberg

Tjäder

Ingelhag³

et al. 2022

Front. Built Environ.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the construction and real estate sector receive more attention, more and more countries include an environmental assessment of buildings based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in their building regulations. Sweden introduced mandatory climate declarations in January 2022, for example. To support stakeholders in conducting the climate declarations and using the results to reduce GHG emissions, user-friendly tools for early planning stages are needed. The aim of this study is to develop and test a framework for user centric development of such tools. The framework builds on three steps; 1) interviewing stakeholders to define tool requirements, 2) developing a prototype tool according to the requirements, and 3) evaluating it based on user feedback. We developed and tested the framework in the Swedish context to provide a blueprint applicable to other countries and contexts. The primary target users are architects with computational design experience but also engineers and real estate developers working in early phases. The results show that the users’ expectations can be met when the requirements are integrated from the very beginning. In the current version, the developed building LCA tool only targets the embodied GHG emissions from the production and construction phase of the building, but it could be extended to include further life cycle phases in the future.

show abstract

Toward LCA-lite: A Simplified Tool to Easily Apply LCA Logic at the Early Design Stage of Building in Australia

Cited by 9 publications

References 56 publications

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

A methodological approach to evaluate structural building projects through the Environmental Economic Index

A Framework for User Centric LCA Tool Development for Early Planning Stages of Buildings

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About