Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 11
-
ItemImproving the uptake of hybrid life cycle assessment in the construction industry(Elsevier, 2017)With building-related greenhouse gas emissions(GHGE) having more than doubled since 1970, they represent one of the largest and most attractive opportunities for climate change mitigation. However, current focus has mainly been on reducing operational GHGE leaving building embodied GHGE (i.e. the GHG emissions associated with the extraction, manufacture and transportation of materials, and the building construction process itself) largely ignored. These embodied emissions have been estimated to represent between 10% to 97% of a buildings total life cycle GHGE. It is thus critical that decision-making in relation to buildings is based on a life cycle perspective. One of the main barriers to this approach is the uncertainty surrounding the financial implications of life cycle GHGE reduction strategies. Despite project cost being a key driver for decision-making, building developers, designers and owners have insufficient knowledge or appropriate tools to adequately consider these life cycle costs and balance them against GHGE savings. Several methods exist for quantifying the costs of a building, such as life cycle costing (LCC). However, LCC and life cycle GHGE assessments are often used in isolation. This study will address the urgent need to move towards integrating these assessments by developing a framework that can be used to ascertain the important relationships and trade-offs between financial and GHGE performance of various building-related GHGE reduction strategies. This framework can be used as part of the building decision-making process and help create a low carbon, affordable built environment.
-
ItemTowards an automated approach for compiling hybrid life cycle inventories(Elsevier, 2017)There is an urgent need to reduce the environmental effects associated with the built environment. While a life cycle approach is considered essential for ensuring that these effects are not simply shifted from one life cycle stage to another, not all life cycle assessment methods provide the same level of detail. Three main approaches are currently used to compile a life cycle inventory capturing data on the inputs and outputs associated with a particular good or service: process, input-output and hybrid analysis. While process analysis is recognised for its specificity, it typically involves a truncation of the system boundary. Conversely, input-output analysis is systemically complete, but aggregates data at the economic sector or commodity level. Combining these two methods in a hybrid analysis has the potential to reduce their limitations, while maintaining their benefits. However, combining process and input-output data remains a highly manual and time-consuming process. The development of an automated approach for compiling life cycle inventories is a critical step in the uptake of hybrid analysis methods. This study aims to explore automating the hybridisation of process and input-output data using the Path Exchange method. Major practical barriers that usually prevent automating the integration of process and input-output data in hybrid life cycle inventories are discussed and a case study focusing on concrete is used for the purpose of illustrating the approach.
-
ItemThe Australian industrial ecology virtual laboratory and multi-scale assessment of buildings and construction(Elsevier, 2018-04-01)As global population and urbanization increase, so do the direct and indirect environmental impacts of construction around the world. Low-impact products, buildings, precincts and cities are needed to mitigate the effects of building construction and use. Analysis of embodied energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across these scales is becoming more important to support this direction. The calculation of embodied impacts requires rigorous, flexible and comprehensive assessment tools. Firstly, we present the Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab) as one such tool discussing its structure, function and wide scope of application. Secondly, we demonstrate its potential high level of resolution in a case study: assessing embodied GHG emissions in an aluminium-framed window by combining product-specific life-cycle inventory data. The input-output analysis at the core of the IELab is mathematically comprehensive in the assessment of direct and indirect impacts and the tool can be applied at a range of scales from building component, to precincts and cities, or to the entire construction industry. IELab uses a flexible formalism that enables consistent harmonisation of diverse datasets and tractable updating of input data. The emissions and energy database supporting IELab has detailed data, aligning with economic accounts and data on labour, water, materials and waste that enrich assessment across other dimensions of sustainability. IELab is a comprehensive, flexible and robust assessment tool well positioned to respond to the challenge of assessing and aiding the design of a low-impact built environment.
-
ItemA model for streamlining and automating path exchange hybrid life cycle assessment(Springer Verlag, 2019-02)Purpose: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is inherently complex and time consuming. atypically involves the collection of data for dozens to hundreds of individual processes. More comprehensive LCI methods, such as input-output analysis and hybrid analysis can include data for billions of individual transactions or transactions/processes, respectively. While these two methods are known to provide a much more comprehensive overview of a product’s supply chain and related environmental flows, they further compound the complex and time-consuming nature of an LCA. This has limited the uptake of more comprehensive LCI methods, potentially leading to ill-informed environmental decision-making. A more accessible approach for compiling a hybrid LCI is needed to facilitate its wider use. Methods: This study develops a model for streamlining a hybrid LCI by automating various components of the approach. The model is based on the path exchange hybrid analysis method and includes a series of inter-related modules developed using object-oriented programming in Python. Individual modules have been developed for each task involved in compiling a hybrid LCI, including data processing, structural path analysis and path exchange or hybridisation. Results and discussion: The production of plasterboard is used as a case study to demonstrate the application of the automated hybrid model. Australian process and input-output data are used to determine a hybrid embodied greenhouse gas emissions value. Full automation of the node correspondence process, where nodes relating to identical processes across process and input-output data are identified, remains a challenge. This is due to varied dataset coverage, different levels of disaggregation between data sources and lack of detail of activities and coverage for specific processes. However, by automating other aspects of the compilation of a hybrid LCI, the comprehensive supply chain coverage afforded by hybrid analysis is able to be made more accessible to the broader LCA community. Conclusions: This study shows that it is possible to automate various aspects of a hybrid LCI in order to address traditional barriers to its uptake. The object-oriented approach used enables the data or other aspects of the model to be easily updated to contextualise an analysis in order to calculate hybrid values for any environmental flow for any variety of products in any region of the world. This will improve environmental decision-making, critical for addressing the pressing global environmental issues of our time.
-
ItemEvaluating the Practice and Outcomes of Applying Regenerative Development to a Large-Scale Project in Victoria, Australia(MDPI AG, 2018-02-09)Regenerative development is one of the critical pathways or processes towards an ecological worldview and a built environment in synergy with the natural environment. This vision aims to restore and support environmental, social and economic flows from a systems perspective. While regenerative development has been discussed in theory and applied to some projects, very few studies have analysed the processes that support its emergence. Our study investigates the design process of an ongoing development project, “Seacombe West” in Victoria, Australia. It evaluates the design outputs, using the LENSES Framework (Living Environments in Natural, Social, and Economic Systems) which is specifically designed to facilitate the emergence of regenerative development thinking. The project included a series of four workshops that led to a set of guidelines that in turn were used to design a masterplan. We evaluate the resulting guidelines, the masterplan, and the experience of the participants through an online survey (70% response rate) and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Our results show that using LENSES encouraged systems thinking and helps facilitate a transdisciplinary approach towards regenerative development. This evaluation provides insights into how regenerative development can emerge in projects and how the potential for net benefit can be embedded.
-
ItemHybrid life cycle inventory methods – A review(Elsevier BV, 2018-01-20)Abstract A variety of methods can be used to compile a life cycle inventory (LCI) as part of a life cycle assessment (LCA) study. Hybrid LCI methods attempt to address the limitations inherent in more traditional process and input-output (IO) LCI methods. This paper provides an overview of the different hybrid LCI methods currently in use in an attempt to provide greater clarity around how each method is applied and their specific strengths and weaknesses. A search of publications quoting the use of hybrid LCI was undertaken for the period from 2010 to 2015, identifying 97 peer-reviewed publications referencing the use of a hybrid LCI. In over one third of the literature analysed, authors only refer to their analysis as a hybrid LCI, without naming the actual method used, making it difficult to fully understand which method was used and any potential limitations. Based on the way in which the various hybrid methods are applied and their existing use, the authors propose a set of clear definitions for existing hybrid LCI methods. This assists in creating a better understanding of, and confidence in, applying hybrid LCI methods amongst LCA practitioners, potentially leading to a greater uptake of hybrid LCI.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableImproving the life cycle energy performance of apartment units through facade design(ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, 2017)The construction and operation of buildings require huge amounts of resources and contribute to climate change and resource depletion. In Australia, apartment buildings are increasingly being erected and are typically characterized by fully-glazed façades with a limited understanding of the life cycle implications of such design. This study uses a typical apartment unit in three climates (Melbourne, Australia; Brisbane, Australia; and Dunedin, New Zealand) and tests 87 different façade variations involving a range of window-to-wall ratios, window types and wall types. For each variation, the life cycle energy demand is quantified over 50 years and compared to that of the base case. Results show that the window-to-wall ratio is the most significant parameter and that smaller glazed areas reduce both embodied and operational energy use. Climate and orientation are other significant parameters, modifying the ranking of variations in terms of life cycle energy performance. In addition, the embodied energy of the façade represented, on average, 45% of the apartments’ life cycle energy demand, highlighting the importance of material selection. Reducing glazed area, considering a life cycle approach and carefully composing a façade with respect to climate and orientation are therefore critical factors in improving the life cycle energy performance of apartment units.
-
ItemQuantifying and mapping embodied environmental requirements of urban building stocks(Elsevier, 2017-03)Cities and their building stocks result in huge environmental impacts which are critical to reduce. However, the majority of existing studies focus on operational requirements or on material stocks. To date, very few studies have quantified embodied environmental requirements of building stocks and spatialised them. This study describes a bottom-up approach to spatially model building stocks and quantify their embodied environmental requirements. It uses a highly disaggregated approach where each building's geometry is modelled and used to derive a bill of quantities. Construction assemblies relevant to each building archetype (derived based on land-use, age and height) are defined using expert knowledge in construction. The initial and recurrent embodied energy, water and greenhouse gas emissions associated with each material within each assembly are calculated using a comprehensive hybrid analysis technique. This model is applied to all buildings of the City of Melbourne, Australia. Results show that rebuilding the City of Melbourne's building stock today would require 904 kt of materials/km² (total: 32 725 kt), 10 PJ/km² (total: 362 PJ), 17.7 Million m³ of embodied water/km² (total: 640.74 Million m³) and would emit 605 ktCO2e/km² (total: 23 530 ktCO2e). This study demonstrates the breadth of the model outputs, including material stocks maps and breakdowns of life cycle embodied requirements by material, construction assembly, building and building typology at the city level. Using such model, city councils can better manage building stocks in terms of waste processing, urban mining and circular economy, as well as reducing embodied environmental requirements over time.
-
ItemTotal water requirements of passenger transport modes(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2016-12)With a growing urban population, it is crucial to maintain and develop environmentally friendly transport modes. However, while one of the most important indicators of environmental performance is water use, very few studies have quantified the total water requirements associated with different transport modes. This study uses input-output analysis to quantify the total water requirements of different passenger-transport modes in Melbourne, Australia, including the direct and indirect water requirements of petrol cars, regional diesel trains and electric metropolitan trains. Results show that urban electric trains are the least water intensive transport mode (3.4 L/pkm) followed by regional diesel trains (5.2 L/pkm) and petrol cars (6.4 L/pkm). These intensities result in average daily per capita transport-related water use that can be greater than residential water use. Findings also show that occupancy rates greatly affect the water intensity of transport modes and that when occupied by five passengers, cars are the least water intensive transport mode. Finally, this study shows that water use associated with transport depends on a range of factors across the supply chain and that indirect requirements associated with operations, including administration, advertisement, servicing and others, can represent a significant share of the total. Reducing the total water requirements of transport modes is therefore a shared responsibility between all the actors involved and integrated action plans are needed in order to reduce water use associated with transport.
-
ItemThe relationship between house size and life cycle energy demand: Implications for energy efficiency regulations for buildings(Elsevier, 2016)House size has significantly increased over the recent decades in many countries. Larger houses often have a higher life cycle energy demand due to their increased use of materials and larger area to heat, cool and light. Yet, most energy efficiency regulations for buildings fail to adequately include requirements for addressing the energy demand associated with house size. This study quantifies the effect of house size on life cycle energy demand in order to inform future regulations. It uses a parametric model of a typical detached house in Melbourne, Australia and varies its floor area from 100 to 392 m2 for four different household sizes. Both initial and recurrent embodied energy requirements are quantified using input-output-based hybrid analysis and operational energy is calculated in primary energy terms over 50 years. Results show that the life cycle energy demand increases at a slower rate compared to house size. Expressing energy efficiency per m2 therefore favours large houses while these require more energy. Also, embodied energy represents 26–50% across all variations. Building energy efficiency regulations should incorporate embodied energy, correct energy intensity thresholds for house size and use multiple functional units to measure efficiency. These measures may help achieve greater net energy reductions