Evaluation indicators for selection of sustainable building materials

Date

2007

Author

Canarslan, Özgecan

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Environmental issues have gained importance due to global environmental threat, such as depletion of energy resources and the impacts of climate change. The building sector is responsible for almost half of the impacts on the environment. Hence, this study focuses on the importance of environmental impacts of building materials. In this regard, firstly, sustainability indicators for building materials were determined and the environmental impacts of selected building materials were studied. Then, the evaluation system BREEAM and the evaluation software BEES were selected and used to evaluate one block of bachelor flats and one of housing units in ODTUKENT, which is located in the Middle East Technical University campus in Ankara, Turkey. Building materials used for the construction of walls, floors and roofs were evaluated according to the indicators accepted by BREEAM and BEES. The results for both units were compared and it was seen that the block of bachelor flats takes lower ratings than the triplex unit for BREEAM and also lower values for BEES. Therefore, the block of bachelor flats has less environmental impact than the triplex unit. While evaluating the materials an exact match for all the materials used in the case buildings could not be found in these tools. Hence, it was not possible to exact results for these materials. In this regard, countries should determine their own evaluation indicators and develop their evaluation systems.

Subject Keywords

Architecture.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12609144/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17397

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis