Considering Energy, Water, and Structural Resilience of Buildings in a Life Cycle Assessment Framework

Environmental damage, pollution and resource depletion resulting from the construction and operation of buildings have led to decades long developments in sustainable architecture. Threats of natural hazards and more recently... [ view full abstract ]

Environmental damage, pollution and resource depletion resulting from the construction and operation of buildings have led to decades long developments in sustainable architecture. Threats of natural hazards and more recently changes in climatic conditions have triggered efforts to also enhance the resilience of buildings. Although the consensus on benefits of increasing the sustainability and resilience of buildings is clear, the ability to evaluate project specific benefits in these areas has been lacking.

This study aims to advance the utility of whole building life cycle assessment (LCA) for the purposes of simultaneous assessment of environmental impacts and resilience of buildings. Typical building LCAs focus on the material and energy use, while this study also includes water and structural performance characteristics, and therefore expands the scope of the sustainability assessment. Additionally, to facilitate the study of resilience, this framework adapts the Performance Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) assessment methodology for lifetime repair impacts, that allows for analyzing a building’s ability to provide its own water and energy beyond the use of the grid, and the overall effects on the continuous functionality, recovery, and life loss prevention during abnormal conditions, such as earthquakes and droughts.

The utility of the framework is demonstrated on an example building placed in multiple locations, including Pittsburgh, PA and San Francisco, CA. The different locations demonstrate the changes in the performance of the building design due to changing environmental conditions affecting energy use, water use, and hazard related impacts. The building systems included in the analysis include foundation, structural, envelope, and select mechanical, plumbing, and electrical systems critical to the energy, water, and structural analyses. Preliminary results show the building’s performance in the following areas: energy, water, and material use intensity; energy and water generation capacity; lifetime life loss potential; and damage recovery effort and duration.

This work advances the field of high-performance, sustainable, and resilient buildings through the development of expanded, multi-criterion, life-cycle based analysis framework. The presented framework applies and combines sustainability and resilience based assessments to early building designs to reveal tradeoffs and simultaneous comparison between design alternatives.