Transferability of Material Composition Indicators for Residential Buildings: A Conceptual Approach Based on a German‐Japanese Comparison

Abstract

Most anthropogenic material stocks and flows are associated with the building sector. Several recent studies have developed material composition indicators (MCIs) suitable for calculating material stocks and flows of the building sector using bottom-up approaches, which hold great potential to provide information to support resource efficiency policies. A major limitation is the lack of country-specific MCIs. This study aims to introduce a concept for a better transferability of MCI across different contexts by proposing requirements for defining MCIs and to discuss options and limits of the transferability. We take existing MCIs for residential buildings in Germany and Japan as case studies and make them comparable by applying harmonization methods. Based on that, similarities and differences are systematically identified and discussed, considering their socioeconomic, cultural, technical, and environmental factors. Our results indicate significant limitations to the transferability of MCIs for detached houses, while bigger apartment complexes show greater homogeneity despite the very different environments in which they are constructed. This indicates that while it is possible to assume foreign MCIs as plausible for large constructions, local coefficients need to be estimated for smaller single-family homes. Augiseau and Barles 2016; Moriguchi and Hashimoto 2016; Ortlepp et al. 2016). Bottom-up approaches follow the principle of "multiply[ing] some practical measure of the stock or flow of interest (e.g., m² [of] floor space) by coefficients for characteristic material compositions (MCIs) that describe the relative material content of the considered good" (Ortlepp et al. 2018, 3).Bottom-up approaches offer a high degree of flexibility, paired with the possibility of spatially explicit resolution,

Determining the material intensities of buildings selected by random sampling: A case study from Vienna

“…Such explanations for deviations between different results are possible when these are presented in a consistent and comparable way (Schiller et al, 2019). This, however, is practiced by only few studies (e.g., Gontia et al, 2018;Lanau & Liu, 2020;Ortlepp et al, 2016;Ortlepp et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020), including the present one.…”

“…Comparison of the results of Vienna (this study) and Germany (Schiller et al, 2019) in t/m 3 GV building . Underlying data can be found in Supporting Information S2, sheet 3-1, and Supporting Information S4, Section 3.3, Table S17 single-, small-multi-, and large-multi-apartment buildings.…”

“…Figure 6 shows the MI building of residential buildings in Vienna in comparison to Germany (Schiller et al, 2019). For this comparison, the MI of different materials m were weighted according to the distribution of different age categories in Vienna, thus showing the weighted mean of…”

“…With respect to the first, and taking the example of residential buildings only, this study shows lower total MI, likely due to the larger number of different building materials considered for Germany. Regional differences in construction practice not only exist between different continents (Schiller et al, 2019), but also neighboring countries. In Germany, other minerals are dominated by sandstone which has a high volumetric mass density.…”

Resource‐saving in buildings through material substitution: A preliminary study of structural dependencies

“…5,32 This concerns, for example, the influence of the building height, which in this case is only indirectly influenced by the floor area as a reference quantity. As Schiller et al 33 pointed out, location-related contexts must therefore be taken into account when using MCI. The design of some building elements will also impact other elements via structural coupling-in other words, they are not independent parameters.…”