Sustainability assessment within the residential building sector: a practical life cycle method applied in a developed and a developing country

• Autores: Oscar Ortiz Rodríguez
• Directores de la Tesis: Guido Sonnemann (dir. tes.), Francesc Castells Piqué (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Rovira i Virgili ( España ) en 2009
• Idioma: inglés
• ISBN: 978-84-693-0723-6
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Marta Schuhmacher Ansuategui (presid.), Juan Carlos Bruno Argilaguet (secret.), Alejandro Josa García-Tornel (voc.), Albert Cuchí i Burgos (voc.), Sofía Valdivia Alarcón (voc.)
• Materias:
  • Ciencias tecnológicas
    • Ingeniería y tecnología del medio ambiente
      • Ingeniería de la contaminación
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
• Resumen

  • More than ever, the residential building sector is concerned with improving the social, economicand environmental indicators of sustainability. In order to overcome the increasing concern of today'sresource depletion, environmental considerations and to address sustainability indicators, a practicallife cycle method has been proposed to decision making integrating environmental and socioeconomicalaspects to analyse the impact of sustainability within the residential building sector usingtwo practical life cycle methods. One method is the Material and Energy Analysis (MEA) which issuggested as an appropriate tool to provide a systematic picture of the direct and physical flows of theuse of natural resources and the other is the environmental management tool of Life CycleAssessment (LCA) as a complement to evaluate environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of thesystem.Furthermore, the method provides sustainability information that facility an adequate decisionmaking towards sustainable development at macro and micro levels. Sustainability assessment atmacro level is determined by exogenous variables that can influence the development of a country.Meanwhile sustainable at the micro level is made within the limits of the whole building life cycle,starting from the construction, use (operation and maintenance) and finishing with the end-of-lifephase. To illustrate it, a case study has been carried out based on the application to two buildings, onelocated in Barcelona, Spain and one situated in Pamplona, Colombia. Then, the main objective of thisthesis is to propose a practical life cycle method including environmental and socio-economicalaspects to evaluate indicators that explicitly measure the residential building sector's impacts. Thisthesis has also provided initiatives for residential dwellings to reduce environmental impacts and assiststakeholders in improving customer patterns during the dwelling life cycle.The findings of this thesis state that the appropriate combination of building materials,improvement in behaviours and patterns of cultural consumption, and the application of governmentcodes would enhance decision-making in the residential building sector towards sustainability. Thedifference in consumption in Colombia and Spanish dwellings is not only due to the variation in resultsfor bio-climatic differences but also because of the consumption habits in each country. Theimportance of consumption habits of citizens and the need to decouple socio-economic developmentfrom energy consumption are sought for achieving sustainability from a life cycle perspective. There isa crucial necessity to provide satisfaction to basic needs and comfort requirements of population withreasonable and sustainable energy consumption.Therefore, there is no doubt that applying environmental managements tools as Life CycleAssessment (LCA) and Material and Energy Analysis (MEA) to the full building life cycle can be veryimportant for reducing environmental loads and thereby improving sustainability indicators. Then, anyimprovement in building sustainability is oriented generally to building materials, energy use and wastemanagement in all phases of the building life cycle, having always in mind that building has to bexxviiiaccessible from an economical and social part of view. The type of standard dwelling variessubstantially depending on the geographic location where it is built. Climate, technological, cultural,socio-economical differences clearly define the standard of a building in any context and in any region.This leads to important differences in the LCA results and it means that any extrapolation of existingEuropean LCA data to the case of a developing country would imply important errors. However, thefunction is always the same, to provide protection and housing for its habitants.