Eirik Resch

The embodied emissions of the construction materials in buildings are a significant contributor to climate change but have only rarely been systematically studied by statistical methods. In the early phases of a building project, empirical results of statistical emission profiles of different building types can act as useful guiding information to inform decisions regarding reduced embodied emissions from construction materials. However, engineers and architects do not have such information at disposition. In this paper, the embodied emissions from the production and transport of initial and recurring building material use in 7 Norwegian case studies of low-emission buildings are made comparable and then studied statistically to find out how the impact varies with building types. The building types studied are timber residential, concrete office, concrete school, and concrete swimming hall. Statistics are produced for each building type and are broken down by the impact contribution from different building elements and material categories. This results in embodied emission profiles and material use profiles for these four building types, which, when based on a larger dataset, can be used by architects and engineers to make informed decisions when aiming for reduced embodied emissions in the early phases of a construction project. Additionally, these profiles can be used as benchmarks by which the final building can be compared when the building is constructed. The statistical results are preliminary and based on a limited dataset, which makes them applicable only as an indication for Norwegian low-emission buildings of these four building types. Future work includes expansion of the dataset on which the profiling is based, further development of the statistical method, and applying the methodology to additional building types.

This paper addresses the role of virtual reality in addressing the specific challenge of the increasing complexity and decreasing usability when dealing with the level of detail required to model a zero emission neighbourhood (ZEN).[1] In such neighbourhoods, there is a need to handle both ‘top down’ neighbourhood level data with ‘bottom up’ building and material level data. This can quickly become overwhelming particularly when dealing with non expert users such as planners, architects, researchers and citizens who play a key part in the design process of future ZENs. Visualisation is an invaluable means to communicate complex data in an interactive way that makes it easier for diverse stakeholders to engage in decision making early and throughout the design process. The main purpose of this work has been to make ZEN key performance indicators (KPIs) more easily comprehensible to a diverse set of stakeholders who need to be involved in the early design phase. The paper investigates how existing extended reality (XR) technologies, such as virtual reality, can be integrated with an existing dynamic LCA method in order to provide visualise feedback on KPIs in early phase design of sustainable neighbourhoods. This existing method provides a dynamic link between the REVIT Bim and the ZEB Tool using a Dynamo plugin.[2] The results presented in this paper demonstrate how virtual reality can help to improve stakeholder participation in the early design phase and more easily integrate science-based knowledge on GHG emissions and other KPIs into the further development of the user-centered architectural and urban ZEN toolbox for the design and planning, operation and monitoring of ZENs. [3]

There is a growing body of research on the embodied emissions of individual buildings, but the results and methods remain mostly inaccessible and incomparable due to insufficient reported information, and differences in system boundaries, methods, and data used. This inhibits further utilization of the results in statistical applications and makes interpretation and validation of results difficult. The database tool presented in this paper attempts to mitigate these challenges by systematizing and storing all relevant information for these studies in a compatible format. The tool enables comparison of results across system boundaries, improves the transparency and reproducibility of the assessments, and makes utilization of the results in statistical applications possible. Statistical applications include embodied emission benchmarking, identifying emission drivers, and quantifying relationships between variables. Other applications of the tool include the assessment of embodied emissions of buildings and neighborhoods. This paper presents the tool and exemplifies its use with preliminary results based on a dataset of 11 buildings. Work is ongoing to expand the dataset, which will provide more comprehensive results.

Bergen and Oslo municipalities focus on integrating energy concerns into city planning and regard this as an opportunity to further lower greenhouse...