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| 2. |
- Frischknecht, R., et al.
(author)
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Comparison of the greenhouse gas emissions of a high-rise residential building assessed with different national LCA approaches - IEA EBC Annex 72
- 2020
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In: IOP Conference Series. - : IOP Publishing. ; , s. 022029-
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Introduction: The international research project IEA EBC Annex 72 investigates the life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings. The project aims inter alia to harmonise LCA approaches on buildings. Methods: To identify major commonalities and discrepancies among national LCA approaches, reference buildings were defined to present and compare the national approaches. A residential high-rise building located in Tianjin, China, was selected as one of the reference buildings. The main construction elements are reinforced concrete shear walls, beams and floor slabs. The building has an energy reference area of 4566 m2 and an operational heating energy demand of 250 MJ/m2a. An expert team provided information on the quantities of building materials and elements required for the construction, established a BIM model and quantified the operational energy demand. Results: The greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts of the building were quantified using 17 country-specific national assessment methods and LCA databases. Comparisons of the results are shown on the level of building elements as well as the complete life cycle of the building. Conclusions: The results of these assessments show that the main differences lie in the LCA background data used, the scope of the assessment and the reference study period applied. Despite the variability in the greenhouse gas emissions determined with the 17 national methods, the individual results are relevant in the respective national context of the method, data, tool and benchmark used. It is important that environmental benchmarks correspond to the particular LCA approach and database of a country in which the benchmark is applied. Furthermore, the results imply to include building technologies as their contribution to the overall environmental impacts is not negligible. Grant support: The authors thank the IEA for its organizational support and the funding organizations in the participating countries for their financial support.
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| 3. |
- Liljenström, Carolina, et al.
(author)
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Life cycle assessment as decision-support in choice of road corridor : case study and stakeholder perspectives
- 2020
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In: International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1556-8318 .- 1556-8334. ; , s. 1-18
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Use of life cycle assessment (LCA) in choice of road corridor could reduce environmental impacts of traffic and infrastructure. This paper explores how the LCA model LICCER, designed to compare life cycle climate impact and energy use of alternative road corridors, fulfills practitioners’ requirements concerning data availability and usefulness for decision-making. Results are based on a case study where the model was applied to a Swedish road reconstruction project and a workshop with potential users of the model. In the case study, the shorter construction alternatives had the lowest traffic related impacts and the highest infrastructure related impacts. Earthworks, soil stabilization, and pavement contributed most to infrastructure related impacts. For the stakeholders, the LICCER model was considered useful because it includes both traffic and infrastructure, includes default data that the user can replace by project specific data, identifies possible improvements, and presents results relative to a reference alternative. However, the model could be improved by including further nation specific default data, different traffic scenarios depending on the road corridor, more detailed traffic scenarios, and an uncertainty assessment of the model output. These findings may be useful in the development and improvement of LCA models and when evaluating the suitability of existing models for use in early planning.
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| 4. |
- Andersen, Sarah Cecilie, et al.
(author)
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Environmental impacts of circularity in the built environment: How do system boundaries affect decision support?
- 2024
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In: Developments in the Built Environment. - 2666-1659. ; 18
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Life-Cycle Assessments (LCA) have become a common tool of decision support in the built environment regarding environmental impacts. The goal of this study is to investigate the influence of different LCA approaches and system boundaries on decision support regarding circular design strategies. Three different ways of applying attributional LCA (ALCA) and one consequential LCA (CLCA) are assessed using a case study of a wooden beam with either virgin or reclaimed timber. While the conclusions are not readily scalable, the case study's results indicate that using reclaimed material is environmentally beneficial when applying ALCA. However, when applying CLCA the reclaimed material performs worse than the virgin material. This highlights the potential pitfalls of scaling up solutions based on LCA results without considering the broader consequences. While the current ALCA approach is useful for declarations, it may not provide comprehensive decision support for driving a transition in the built environment.
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| 5. |
- Birgisdóttir, Dröfn, et al.
(author)
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A novel care guide for personalised palliative care – a national initiative for improved quality of care
- 2021
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In: BMC Palliative Care. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1472-684X. ; 20, s. 1-12
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- BackgroundEven when palliative care is an integrated part of the healthcare system, the quality is still substandard for many patients and often initiated too late. There is a lack of structured guidelines for identifying and caring for patients; in particular for those with early palliative care needs. A care guide can act as a compass for best practice and support the care of patients throughout their palliative trajectory. Such a guide should both meet the needs of health care professionals and patients and families, facilitating discussion around end-of-life decision-making and enabling them to plan for the remaining time in life. The aim of this article is to describe the development and pilot testing of a novel Swedish palliative care guide.MethodsThe Swedish Palliative Care Guide (S-PCG) was developed according to the Medical Research Council framework and based on national and international guidelines for good palliative care. An interdisciplinary national advisory committee of over 90 health care professionals together with patient, family and public representatives were engaged in the process. The feasibility was tested in three pilot studies in different care settings.ResultsAfter extensive multi-unit and interprofessional testing and evaluation, the S-PCG contains three parts that can be used independently to identify, assess, address, follow up, and document the individual symptoms and care-needs throughout the whole palliative care trajectory. The S-PCG can provide a comprehensive overview and shared understanding of the patients’ needs and possibilities for ensuring optimal quality of life, the family included.ConclusionsBased on broad professional cooperation, patients and family participation and clinical testing, the S-PCG provides unique interprofessional guidance for assessment and holistic care of patients with palliative care needs, promotes support to the family, and when properly used supports high-quality personalised palliative care throughout the palliative trajectory. Future steps for the S-PCG, entails scientific evaluation of the clinical impact and effect of S-PCG in different care settings – including implementation, patient and family outcomes, and experiences of patient, family and personnel.
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| 7. |
- di Bari, R., et al.
(author)
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Buildings LCA and digitalization: Designers' toolbox based on a survey
- 2022
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In: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. - : IOP Publishing. - 1755-1307 .- 1755-1315. ; 1078:1
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In a context of digitalization and increasing quality requirements, the building sector is facing an increasing level of complexity regarding its design process. This results in a growing number of involved actors from different domains, a multitude of tasks to be completed and a higher degree of needed expertise. New buildings are also required to reach higher performances in terms of environmental quality. To that regard, the exploitation of the full potential of digital tools can facilitate the integration of environmental aspects in the planning process, limit productivity shortcomings and reduce environmental impacts, which can result from an unaware decision making. Building environmental assessment can be performed through several Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based tools. “Pure calculation” tools quantify final buildings' environmental potential, while “complex tools” additionally support decision making during the planning process. It is often difficult to choose the best suitable tool, which strongly depends on the user's needs. Within the IEA EBC Annex 72, a survey was realized with the main objective of creating a comprehensive overview of the existing tools dedicated to buildings LCA. The questionnaire included the usability, functionality, compliance, data reliability and interoperability of the analysed tools. Lastly, based on the survey outcomes and their critical assessment, a procedure for the identification and selection of a tool has been proposed based on user's needs. As a result, this work outlines main features of currently available building LCA tools, for which there is a harmonized status in terms of usability and overall applied LCA methodology. Despite the need for more automatized workflows, tools' embedding is mostly not yet applicable in system chains or limited to a restricted number of tools.
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| 8. |
- Habert, Guillaume, et al.
(author)
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Carbon budgets for buildings: harmonising temporal, spatial and sectoral dimensions
- 2020
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In: Buildings and Cities. - : Ubiquity Press, Ltd.. - 2632-6655. ; 1:1, s. 429-452
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Target values for creating carbon budgets for buildings are important for developing climate-neutral building stocks. A lack of clarity currently exists for defining carbon budgets for buildings and what constitutes a unit of assessment—particularly the distinction between production-and consumption-based accounting. These different perspectives on the system and the function that is assessed hinder a clear and commonly agreed definition of ‘carbon budgets’ for building construction and operation. This paper explores the processes for establishing a carbon budget for residential and non-residential buildings. A detailed review of current approaches to budget allocation is presented. The temporal and spatial scales of evaluation are considered as well as the distribution rules for sharing the budget between parties or activities. This analysis highlights the crucial need to define the temporal scale, the roles of buildings as physical artefacts and their economic activities. A framework is proposed to accommodate these different perspectives and spatio-temporal scales towards harmonised and comparable cross-sectoral budget definitions. Policy relevance The potential to develop, implement and monitor greenhouse gas-related policies and strategies for buildings will depend on the provision of clear targets. Based on global limits, a carbon budget can establish system boundaries and scalable targets. An operational framework is presented that clarifies greenhouse gas targets for buildings in the different parts of the world that is adaptable to the context and circumstances of a particular place. A carbon budget can enable national regulators to set feasible and legally binding requirements. This will assist the many different stakeholders responsible for decisions on buildings to coordinate and incorporate their specific responsibility at one specific level or scale of activity to ensure overall compliance. Therefore, determining a task specific carbon budget requires an appropriate management of the global carbon budget to ensure that specific budgets overlap, but that the sum of them is equal to the available global budget without double-counting.
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| 9. |
- Rasmussen, F. N., et al.
(author)
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Drivers, barriers and development needs for LCA in the Nordic building sector - A survey among professionals
- 2020
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In: IOP Conference Series. - : IOP Publishing Ltd.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Introduction: Design practitioners' knowledge and understanding of LCA is crucial for the necessary transition to decarbonisation of the built environment, as well as for lowering other environmental impacts. Recently, the Nordic councils of ministers suggested enhancing cooperation and harmonization within the use of LCA in the built environment in order to accelerate climate change mitigation in the building sector. To this end, it is important to identify in which areas harmonization and cooperation is especially needed. This paper presents the results of a survey on the LCA practice among Nordic design professionals in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. The aim is to analyse the survey results, and to reflect on the implications for further harmonization of method and industry practice within the Nordic region. Method: Survey results for the Nordic countries represent a subset of a larger survey conducted as part of the IEA Annex 72 project about assessing life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings. The web-based survey, targeting design practitioners, was carried out from late 2018 to late 2019 within 24 participating countries. From the Nordic countries, 223 respondents accessed the survey and answered one or more questions. Results and conclusions: The survey shows that Nordic building designers, in general, feel personally or professionally committed to applying LCA. However, a main barrier for including LCA in the building design is the perceived lack of incentive as well as a lack of sufficient data and information. Respondents perceive a moderate drive from the public sector and property developers/investors for integrating assessments of environmental performance. Concerning development needs, respondents point towards harmonization efforts within LCA for use within BIM. Results of this survey furthermore reveal the dilemma for the designers between, on the one hand, needing to know all the details of the environmental assessment to learn what drives and controls the results of a project, and on the other hand, needing to convert the results of a project into easily communicable information for the client. This 'translation' of results is an additional area of potential harmonization within the Nordic region.
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| 10. |
- Rasmussen, F. N., et al.
(author)
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Existing benchmark systems for assessing global warming potential of buildings : Analysis of IEA EBC Annex 72 cases
- 2022
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In: IOP Conference Series. - : IOP Publishing.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and actors to assess the global warming potential (GWP) of building activities. In several countries, life cycle based requirements on GWP are currently being incorporated into building regulations. After the establishment of general calculation rules for building LCA, a crucial next step is to evaluate the performance of the specific building design. For this, reference values or benchmarks are needed, but there are several approaches to defining these. This study presents an overview of existing benchmark systems documented in seventeen cases from the IEA EBC Annex 72 project on LCA of buildings. The study characterizes their different types of methodological background and displays the reported values. Full life cycle target values for residential and non-residential buildings are found around 10-20 kg CO2e/m2/y, whereas reference values are found between 20-80 kg CO2e/m2/y. Possible embodied target- and reference values are found between 1-12 kg CO2e/m2/y for both residential and non-residential buildings. Benchmark stakeholders can use the insights from this study to understand the justifications of the background methodological choices and to gain an overview of the level of GWP performance across benchmark systems.
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