Assistant Lecturer,Department of Civil Engineer, ASPAITE AN APROACH TO THE METHODOLOGY OF LCA IN BUILDINGS. AN ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE 0F AN OFFICE BUILDING IN GREECE GEORGE XANTHAKIS Assistant Lecturer,Department of Civil Engineer, ASPAITE PANAGIOTA PANOY Technical Civil Engineer,Department of Civil Engineer, ASPAITE OCTOBER 2012

Sustainability Sustainability is adopted as the main goal for the future development of mankind. A famous definition is this of Brundland report (1987) : “Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” According to Ortiz, the term sustainable development can be described as developing quality of life which allows people to live in a healthy environment, improving the social, economic and environmental conditions for now and the future.

The definition of Sustainable development establishes clear links with: Poverty Equity Environmental quality Safety Population control In general, the field of SD is subdivided into the areas of: Economic (Profit-Prosperity) Environmental (Planet) Social (People)

Sustainable development Fig. 1. A popular way of representing SD

It is rather straightforward to propose the following scheme for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA): CSA = LCA + LCC + SLCA Where: LCA: is SETAC/ISO environmental Life Cycle Assessment. LCA: is the "compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle" (ISO 2006). ISO: (2006) defines the life cycle as the "consecutive and interlinked stages of a product system, from raw material acquisition or generation of natural resources to the final disposal.

Life cycle Costing, LCC Environmental Life Cycle Costing (LCC) describes all costs associated with the life cycle of a product that are directly covered by one or more of the actors in that life cycle. These costs must relate to real money flows. Societal life cycle assessment, SLCA Societal LCA is considered to be still in its infancy, although the idea is not new. There is quite a bit of grey literature in this field, and the situation reminds early 1990.

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY In the context of sustainable development, a new approach in building has to be presented that will minimize the environmental impact and protect energy and water resources. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (or Analysis) implies the identification and quantification of emissions and material consumption which affects the environment at all stages of the entire product of a life cycle.

LCA tools During the last years, beside generic LCA tools, several tools specific to the building sector have been proposed. Also many authors developed their own tools (Zabalza Bribian et al. 2009; Kofoworola and Gheewala 2008). There are two well-known classification systems for the environmental assessment tools. One was developed by: the ATHENA Institute (Trusty, 2000), with 3 level-categories and the other by IEA Annex 31 (2001), including 5 level-categories.

Application of LCA to the Construction Industry. Literature Review Between 1998 and 2001, published the first worth remarking papers. Since then, the literature on building LCA has focused on two different ways: - LCA for the building material - LCA for the Whole Process of the construction Building material and component combinations. (Asif, 2005) studied eight construction materials for a dwelling in Scotland. Koroneos (2006-2009) tried to identify keys issues associated with the life cycle of bricks mortars, and cement produced and used in Greece.

B. Whole process of the construction (WPC) It is divided up in three common scenarios : - commercial buildings, - dwellings and - civil engineering constructions. Β1. LCA for commercial constructions The first attempt on complete LCA of office buildings appeared in 2003. Large office buildings , new university building campus, are studied all over the world, while most of them covering the phases of construction and operation,ignoring the demolition phase. Also there are a number of studies which compares classical buildings and these consisted of renewable materials. A few studies have been published on the LCA comparison of steel and concrete office buildings.

B2. LCA for dwellings One of the first analyses during the last years on the environmental impact of the dwelling as a whole was performed by Adalberth et al. (2001). Since then, a lot of buildings are studied all over the world . Peuportier (2001) - France Jian et al. (2003) - Japan Arjen et al. (2006) – Denmark Ortiz, 2010 - a block of flats located in Barcelona, Spain – and in Colombia The aim of most projects was to involve the environmental loads and compares operational energy during operational activities (the stage with the greatest impact). Β3. LCA for engineering constructions LCA have been used in other civil engineering projects, as Highway constructions.

This paper is consisted of two parts: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This paper is consisted of two parts: A literature review of Sustainability and LCA analysis is presented, making a focus especially in Buildings. An approach to the methodology of LCA analysis in buildings (ISO 14000 series) and LCA software tool are following. Β. In the second part, based on the literature review and selecting from this, the required data ,a LCA analysis is applied to an office building located in Greece, using software Gabi.

LCA methodology A. Goal and scope: purpose-audiences -system boundaries-time span- functional unit B. LCI: Collect data for each process (energy-mass flow) C. Impact Assessment Evaluates potential environmental impacts

AN OFFICE BUILDING IN GREECE The system includes the entire life of the building, Construction Phase- Use Phase-End life Phase The functional unit was defined as the unit of one sq.meter 2 storey building about 180 sq. meter

RESULTS(1) Fig. 1: Material Percentage Contribution by material mass Fig. 2: Impact Assessment Contribution Construction Phase)

RESULTS(2) Fig. 3: The Environmental Impact Contribution at Use Phase Fig. 4: The Environmental Impact Contribution at Demolition Phase

RESULTS(3) Fig. 5: The Environmental Impact Contribution of the building at each phase .

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION . Humankind has no chance to survive on this planet unless a sustainable development is achieved; sustainability has to be established at all levels. Men have to focus to the relative modest aspect of products, including processes. Progress can be made, step by step, without direct political influence but not without the economy. LCA is well explained, its methodologies are well established and accessible to users, but there are still many impediments to its use for buildings, and these set the research agenda for the future. The main problem is the complicated production process of the building, and its life span which is long with future phases based on assumptions.

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