Chair of Sustainable ConstructionInstitute of Construction and Infrastructure...

Chair of Sustainable ConstructionInstitute of Construction and Infrastructure Management 29-30.10.2013

MSc. D-Arch Edwin ZeaProf. Dr. Guillaume Habert

Sustainability assessment of eight transitional shelters

Shelter Meeting 13b, Genève, October 29-30, 2013


Outline

• Background• Methodologies• Results• Conclusions• Perspectives• Questions

2


Background

3

Edwin Zea Escamilla

• Born in Colombia 1978• Diploma in Architecture 2004• Full Scholarship for Master studies in NL 2006• MSc. Urban Environmental Management 2009• Chair of Sustainable constructions ETHZ 2010• PhD candidate 2012


Background

4

Chair of Sustainable Construction – ETH Zürich

The Chair of Sustainable Construction focuses on the promotion of sustainable use of building materials throughout the life cycle of buildings and infrastructures.


Background

5

The need of sustainable buildings and construction materials with:

- Life cycle wide low embodied energy- Minimized primary resource consumption- Reduced green house gas emissions - On an affordable price basis - A purpose specific high performance


Background

6

• 2011 FAST meeting in LausanneSustainability assessment of affordable housing technologies

• 2012 Sustainability assessment of affordable housing technologies

Life cycle assessment for alternative building technologies. Construction methods for low income inhabitants in the Philippines

• 2013 BSc. Project at ETH Zürich20 Civil and Environmental Engineering students (~100 hours per student)

Understand the challenges associated with LCA

Learn the implication of the use of assumptions on LCA

Learn about transitional shelters


Methodologies

7

Sustainability Assessment

What is sustainability?It is not Sustainable Development(SD), Sustainability is a goal while SD is a way/method to reach sustainability.

Our definitionSustainability is an state in which the processes associated to a human activity are balanced in a way that allows the activity to be perpetuated in the time.


Methodologies

8


Three categories were defined:

- Environmental Impact: Effects on the natural environment from the production, transportation, use and disposal of construction materials; and shelters

- Cost: Associated to purchase and transport of construction materials, and erection of shelters

- Technical: Related to the risk zones in which the communities live and the mechanical performance of shelters in case of an event (earthquake, winds, and flooding)


Methodologies

9

Source: Authors


A functional unit was defined for each category.

For environmental impact the shelter’s covered area and life span were used as denominators.

For the Technical category a ratio between risk/performance was developed.

Chair of Sustainable ConstructionInstitute of Construction and Infrastructure Management 29-30.10.2013 10

Source: Authors

Life Cycle

Methodologies

The life cycle of a Product consist of four interconnected steps:

-Extraction: the raw material is extracted from the environment and/or recycled

-Production: the raw materials are processed into finished materials and/or products (e.g. buildings)

-Use: represents the service life of a product

-Disposal: The product is disposed (land fill, burn, compost) into the natural environment or recycled/re-used

Chair of Sustainable ConstructionInstitute of Construction and Infrastructure Management 29-30.10.2013 11

Source: Authors

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Methodologies

LCA is a method developed to quantify the material use, energy use, and environmental impact associated with specific products, services, and technologies. LCA is described and standardized in ISO1440 and consists of four steps: definition of goal and scope; development of life cycle inventories; impact assessment; and interpretation.

This is an iterative process where the goal and scope is constantly adjusted depending on the limitations found on the data collection and the insights provided by the impact assessment.


Methodologies

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LCA Theoretical modeling- LCA of 8 shelters were modeled at their specific location- Country specific dataset for materials were developed

Source: IFRC

INDONESIA BAMBOO INDONESIA TIMBER PAKISTAN TIMBER PERU TIMBER

PERU TIMBER HAITI STEEL INDONESIA STEEL VIETNAM STEEL


Methodologies

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Source: IFRC

LCA Theoretical modeling

- Local and international transport of construction materials was included- Local materials = locally produced not locally available


Methodologies

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LCA Theoretical modeling

LCA model – Peru, timber

Source: Authors


Methodologies

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Cost Assessment

- Approximate project cost per shelter (CHF)(no disaggregation of cost, due to lack of information)

- Shelter’s life span (months)

- Shelter’s covered area (m2)

CA = Cost / Life span / Area


Methodologies

16

Technical Assessment

Risk classification

Performance classification

Source: IFRC

Source: IFRC


Methodologies

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Source: Authors

High 3 Green 3Medium 2 Amber 2Low 1 Red 1

Hazard levelPerformance of

structures

Risk / performance matrix

Hazard/Perform

anceGreen Amber Red

High 6 5 4Medium 5 4 3

Low 4 3 2

- Scores were defined for each hazard level and Performance of structures

- The best score is obtained when the structure performs adequately (green) on the «high» level of hazard

- The scores were calculated for earth quake, wind, and flood.

- An average of these scores was calculated for the final assessment


Results

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Environmental Assessment

Source: Authors

- There is no direct correlation between type of material and environmental impact

- Appropriated design plays a more important role than the type of material

- The use of local materials reduces significantly the environmental impact


Results

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Environmental Assessment - Process contribution

Source: Authors

- In general, the main contribution to the environmental impact comes from the materials used in the shelter’s structure

- The environmental Impacts from the shelters can be improved by a combination of appropriated design and appropriated material selection

- The road transport of heavy construction materials like concrete can significantly influence the environmental impact


Results

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Cost Assessment

Source: Authors

Shelter location - Material CHF/m2/month

INDONESIA BAMBOO 0.23INDONESIA TIMBER 2.31PAKISTAN TIMBER 0.85PERU TIMBER PERU 1.30PERU TIMBER 1.57HAITI STEEL 9.95INDONESIA STEEL 3.40VIETNAM STEEL 0.83


Results

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Source: Authors

Shelter location - Material Earthquake Wind FloodTechnical

performance

INDONESIA BAMBOO 4 3 5 4.0INDONESIA TIMBER 5 4 6 5.0PAKISTAN TIMBER 5 2 5 4.0PERU TIMBER 5 3 3 3.7PERU TIMBER 5 3 3 3.7HAITI STEEL 4 5 6 5.0INDONESIA STEEL 5 2 6 4.3VIETNAM STEEL 3 3 6 4.0


Results

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Sustainability Assessment @ Location

Source: Authors

B1 INDONESIA BAMBOO B2 INDONESIA TIMBER B3 PAKISTAN TIMBER B4 PERU TIMBER PERU B5 PERU TIMBER B6 HAITI STEEL B7 INDONESIA STEEL B8 VIETNAM STEEL

Technical performance

5.04.34.03.7


Results

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Sustainability Assessment @ Location

- The studied shelters present very similar performances on the three categories, with exception of B6 Haiti

- Shelters with high technical performance can be achieved under low price/low environmental impact per functional unit conditions

- It might be more cost effective to try to improve the technical performance from shelters like B1, B3, and B7 than to reduce the cost and impacts from B6

- Main attention shall be paid to the improvement of earthquake and wind resistance, which will increase the overall shelter’s technical performance

- Floodings are highly unpredictable and very difficult to design against


Conclusions

- The use of locally produced construction materials reduces both cost and environmental impacts of the shelters

- Bio based constructive systems provide the best compromise between environmental impact and cost but their technical performance needs to be improved

- The studied shelters provide a balance between Environmental, Economic and Performance factors, with exception of shelter B6 Haiti

- It would be more efficient to try to improve the technical performance of the shelters than to try to reduce their cost or environmental impact

- An improvement on the technical performance of shelters will rebound on an increase of their environmental impact and cost

- Appropriated design and material selection play a significant role on the shelter’s performance


Perspective

- To develop structural models to be able to evaluate the technical performance

- To develop global LCA datasets able to represent the diversity of production practices of construction materials

- To develop a detailed life cycle cost analysis, in order to better understand how the cost is distributed and geographically located

- To further study the effects of transport on both cost and environmental impacts


The authors will like to thank

The students that took part of the BSc Project spring 2013: Lea, Viktor, Barthélémy, Andy, Sebastian, Selina, Nina, Dominic, Michael, Alessandro, Mariano, Samaria, Hannes, Aurea, Hannah, Katharina, Marvin, Umeyr, Leïla, and Uzeyr.

And to HILTI AG for their support in the development of the present research project.

Acknowledgements


Questions?

Thank you for your attention

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