Building-SAT: a whole building life cycle assessment tool framework to quantify the global warming potential of buildings in South Asian Region

This paper presents a framework to mathematically model the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions of any type of building, especially applicable for South Asian region. The framework has been validated for Sri Lanka and a freely available, web-based whole building life cycle assessment-software tool considering the full building life cycle including end of life has been presented. Eight subphases and corresponding thirty-six subsystems under three main life cycle stages were modelled using twenty-three equations to capture cradle to gate GHG emissions arising from material/machinery/energy/water use and transport-related inputs. The applicability of the tool was evaluated using a case study on a six-storey hospital building in Sri Lanka and the order of magnitude of the results was analysed by comparing with similar studies from literature. The estimated Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the hospital building assessed was 215.11 kg CO2–eq/m2/year, At the project level, considering the full building life cycle, GWP contributions of 71.70% was due to electricity use while material use and transport amounted to 23.50 and 4.20%, respectively. The highest contribution to the building life cycle GWP (89.49%) was during the building use stage. These findings are on par with the value ranges of similar studies from literature. Emission accounting due to earth work considering machine hours, availability of Asian construction technologies such as site-mixed mortar for brick/block work and plastering using minimum data entry, automated calculations of sourcing distances, and the ability to add new database entries by the users are some unique features.