Calculating the environmental impact of sustainable building materials using digital tools
A key lever for increasing the number of low-carbon buildings is the selection of sustainable construction materials. It need digital tools and a digital mindset to evaluate these resources.
The architecture, engineering, construction, and operation (AEC/O) sector has long placed a high priority on combating climate change. The industry is not on track to meet its 2050 decarbonization ambitions, according to recently disclosed data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Buildings and construction continued to be responsible for around 37% of energy- and process-related CO2 emissions in 2021, according to UNEP's 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings & Construction.
There is obviously still work to be done. The environmental consequences of new construction projects must be evaluated extremely early in order to minimize the building's carbon footprint during its entire existence, even though no single strategy will guarantee complete decarbonization.
Particularly, whenever possible, picking sustainable building materials is a great place to start. More environmentally friendly building materials can be specified early in the design process, lowering the carbon emissions produced throughout production, construction, and operation.
Typically, a lifecycle assessment (LCA) is used, which depends on building information modeling (BIM). The Nemetschek Group and its 13 brands provide digital solutions that offer a holistic, data-driven approach required to further drive the transformation of the construction sector by taking into account the whole building lifecycle.
Assessing sustainable building materials with LCA
LCA is a well-known technique for determining the environmental risks associated with construction-related goods, services, and even manufacturing processes. By doing this, it will be possible to evaluate many design possibilities and choose the most environmentally friendly one. It is crucial to employ these assessment techniques from the beginning of a project since the choices made at the first phases have some of the biggest effects on a building's environmental performance.
There are numerous techniques available for lifespan evaluation, each with varying levels of complexity and granularity. In essence, the technologies extract environmental data from databases, which is then utilized to compute different environmental consequences of the building's components over the course of the structure's whole existence. This gives designers a reliable foundation for making choices that will improve the building's performance at every level.
Choosing sustainable building materials
While an LCA takes into account a material's whole lifecycle, including its extraction, manufacture, use, and disposal, different materials have distinct factors that influence their sustainability. Timber, for instance, is sometimes regarded as being more environmentally friendly than concrete. However, in order to maximize the ecological advantages of lumber, it must be produced responsibly from well-managed forests, constructed optimally to maximize its service life, and disposed of properly at the end of its lifecycle.
Similarly, bamboo has a substantially lower Global Warming Potential (GWP) than conventional building materials like steel and concrete, but this can be greatly influenced by the growth methods utilized and the energy sources used during processing and manufacture.
There is variation even with conventional building materials. For instance, any admixtures may have an impact on the environmental impact of concrete. These can increase the concrete's useful life or make it possible to employ recycled and alternative materials, which can reduce the carbon footprint of the material throughout the course of its life. The carbon emissions produced by concrete throughout the course of its lifetime are also strongly influenced by the type of concrete utilized.
How digital design supports LCA
An LCA can be carried out using a BIM model as a base. Since BIM models are semantically rich, they already contain a large amount of the data needed to complete an LCA. It is much simpler to exchange information using openBIM formats, like IFC, which allows mapping elements to their corresponding records in the desired ecological database to estimate their environmental impact. These representations (including element types, material layers, and properties) are standardised.
Of course, there are a lot of unanswered questions at this early stage of design. A strategy for addressing those concerns would be to identify materials less precisely and more broadly, for as by using the word "concrete" rather than describing the type and strength of concrete (eg C30). This could imply that it is more challenging to produce an accurate LCA early in the project when options are being considered.
To estimate the effects of the decisions being taken, various uncertainty mitigation strategies are used. In-progress studies are looking into the best ways to deal with this problem, like leveraging data from completed projects or discovering ways to enrich the BIM data and automatically connect its components to an LCA profile or database. The LCA's evaluations will get more precise as these initiatives progress.
Towards a digital way of thinking
The development of a precise LCA is a challenging endeavor, but it is essential if the AEC/O business is to achieve its decarbonization objectives. The examination can be facilitated by digital technologies, and new approaches are always emerging to simplify the procedure even further.
For instance, scientists are looking into ways to make timber frames more soundproof at an early stage of the design process.
These studies are often carried out once the project has reached the detailed design stage. The issue with this is that these studies can reveal problems that typically call for costly and time-consuming adjustments. The planning of the building physics, including the acoustic study, has been moved to earlier stages using openBIM, where modifications will have less of an effect.
How to improve the accuracy of calculations of environmental impacts, such as embodied carbon or energy efficiency, is another field of development.
Although these calculations can be made early in the design process, their accuracy is limited because there are sometimes still a lot of unsolved uncertainties. The BIM model's relative "completeness" might frequently give the impression that the design is more finished than it actually is. For instance, there could be limitations in the classification of materials, a lack of knowledge regarding the location or use of materials, or flaws in the decision-making process that hinder design.
It is abundantly evident that digital technologies are a crucial tool for decarbonization as the sector rushes to achieve net zero. Additionally, working with academics and researchers might result in technologies that promote sustainability. Making it feasible to make more informed judgments based on digital tools at an early stage must be one of the objectives of the construction sector if improved environmental outcomes are to be achieved.
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