The importance of LCA and service life prediction in sustainable design

2008-05-14
The building sector has a greater impact on the global environment or faces a greater obligation to improve its environmental performance. In buildings that have really long life cycles; renovation and refurbishment contribute more significantly in their life cycle assessment (LCA) that is a methodology for assessing the environmental performance of a product over its full life cycle. At that point, accurate service life prediction plays important role in LCAs. Estimated service life of components, which is a function of reference service life in conjunction with other factors, is generally considered in usage phases of their life. For building components, the occupants decide to make replacements taking into consideration their functional service life. In light of sustainable principles and policies it makes more sense to renovate or refurbish old buildings. Energy consumption in hotels is one of the highest compared to other building types. These refurbishments are really important because the hotels should follow the fashion in order to offer best services. Many of the services to hotel guests are highly resource intensive, whether it concerns energy, water or raw materials. To assess the life cycle of hotels and their components is really useful to understand the importance of LCA from the point of view of sustainability. This study was about to assess the life cycle of the refurbishment project of the five star hotel in Ankara. The estimated service life of changing materials especially the finishing ones is really shorter than their reference service life. A LCA tool, ATHENA is used for analyzing this refurbishment project. According to the results of software analysis, a material matrix was proposed.
11th International Conference on Durability of Building Materials and Components, 2008

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Citation Formats
A. B. Çakmaklı, “The importance of LCA and service life prediction in sustainable design,” İstanbul / TURKEY, 2008, vol. 4, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/78641.