Sensitivity analysis of embodied carbon and energy of buildings via different environmental product declarations

Utilization of Environmental product declarations of different brands of the same construction material may end up with diverse environmental impact results. Aforementioned variability is not thoroughly investigated in building level in the literature. This study addresses this literature gap by conducting uncertainty analyses on two different types of structures; residential and university buildings by Monte-Carlo Simulation (MCS). The analyses were carried out based on embodied carbon (EC) and embodied energy (EE) values obtained from Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) documents. To conduct the sensitivity analysis, 287 EPD documents related to construction materials were collected; 242 of these were used for university buildings and 177 for residential buildings. The residential building consists of materials such as reinforced concrete frame system, aerated concrete walls, paint, PVC door and window frames, as well as tile roof. The university building consists of materials such as terrace roof, aluminum facade, suspended ceiling, and reinforced concrete frame structure. The collected EPD documents are randomly assigned to the corresponding construction materials. The coefficients of variation for the university building are found to be 11.58% for EE and 8.86% for EC, while for the residential building they are 11.10% for EE and 8.9% for EC. The correlation between EE and EC were computed as 0.7312 for educational and 0.6623 for residential buildings, respectively. The analysis results demonstrated 2 outputs; first, the computed environmental impact values may deviate within 10% based on the utilized EPD documents and second, EE and EC are positively correlated.