The Research Of Building Environmental Impact Index

Building and its product chain play crucial role in urban economic development and socialdevelopment. However building has negative effects on urban environment and low-carbonsustainability. In China, building and its product chain count40%of emission of CO2and35%of environmental impacts. Therefore development of green building or low-carbon building isplaying priority role in achieving urban low-carbon sustainability. In previous studies, allassessment tools emphases on the technology, energy efficiency in the operation stage ofbuildings. Most of the tools are not taking into account the life cycle of buildings andenvironmental aspects of sustainability. For measuring environmental impacts and emission ofCO2of buildings, indicators and then index are developed. However there are challenges ofscoring and weighting indicators and index. In this study, using analytic hierarchy process(AHP), the issue of buildings’ environmental impact index and assessment system aredeveloped, which highlights the environment impact of each stage in the life cycle ofbuilding.Firstly, several tools from Europe, Japan, and the United States are reviewed and analyzedwith the aim of providing insights of current development of the concept of life cycle ofbuilding and methodologies of the environmental impact calculation and data collection. Thisstudy has divided the building life cycle into six stages: planning and design, production andtransportation of building materials, construction, operation and management, buildingdemolition, waste material disposal respectively. Important environmental impact factors aredefined as energy consumption, building materials production, construction site disturbance,resource efficiency etc..Secondly, an assessment system of building environmental impact index is established on thebase of the six life-cycle-stage and important environmental impact factors. Combined greenbuilding theory with life-cycle theory, the system consists of10indicators, including the lifecycle carbon emissions, energy efficiency, site disturbance etc.. Applying AHP and expertconsultation, the weight of each indicator is calculated. Among the10indicators, buildingutilization ratio, energy efficiency, life-cycle carbon emissions and renewable energyutilization are the most important four indicators with the weight of0.1651,0.1432,0.1432,0.1326respectively. The results are consistent with the current building policies and variousbuilding Rating System. Meanwhile, according to geography, climate and other features, theassessment criteria (both the method and the value) of each indicator index is analyzed andproposed. Thus, we can get the environmental impact index based on the actual performanceof the building. Then, based on building environmental impact index system, the buildingenvironmental impact index is0.4for residential builaing and0.41for public building, thosebuildings just blong to the second catogray. Finally, prodided some suggestions on the development of future architecture in the context ofclimate change. Combined with the environmental impact index system, to lower theenvironmental impact, we should low the site disturbance by building design and planning,reducing CO2emissions by building materials selection, energy efficiency management,improve building utilization and energy efficiency in the whole life cycle.