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Events Collaborations |
STREAMLAB: Streamlined environmental and cost life-cycle
assessment of building retrofits: a decision-supporting tool Reference:
MIT-EXPL/SUS/0013/2017 Coordinator:
Fausto Freire Proponent
Institution: CIE-ADAI Projects
Partners: CEBER_UC, INESCC Funding
Entity: FCT | MIT-EXPL/SUS/0013/2017 Funding: 83 544 € Abstract Retrofitting of existing
buildings can promote a significant reduction in the environmental load and
operating costs of the European building stock. In Portugal, there are two
million households needing renovation (34% of the Portuguese building stock).
Most of those buildings are among the largest contributors to the poor energy
performance of the building sector. Given their long life-span,
it is essential that designers and developers are encouraged to identify
effective and eco-efficient strategies that reduce the overall life-cycle
(LC) burden of buildings. LC approaches have been
extensively applied to analyze building environmental impacts and
costs. However, conventional LC approaches are very time consuming and
resource-intensive to implement, preventing a more widespread use.
Additionally, they are usually performed in late
design stages when significant reduction in total LC impacts is costly to
achieve. Streamlined LC approaches have been used as
a technique to support early stage decisions of a product or system when less
detail is known promoting greater potential in reducing environmental impacts
and costs. However, early design decisions imply that less data are
available. Existing methods for filling data gaps often ignore the effects of
the uncertainty inherent in estimating data. The StreamLAB
project proposes a novel decision-supporting tool to assess the environmental
impacts and costs of building retrofits in Portugal by integrating a
streamlined LC environmental and cost assessment with a data envelopment
analysis (DEA) model. The streamlined LC approach is used
to derive eco-efficiency ratios, and DEA is utilized to rank alternatives
without a need to subjectively weigh the different environmental and cost LC
metrics. The streamlined LC approach for building retrofits accommodates
varying amounts (and quality) of information on retrofit design and provides
estimates and associated uncertainty for environmental and economic
performance. The method comprises the application of structured
under-specification, probabilistic triage, and guided sequential
specification. DEA compares alternatives without a priori consideration of
any functional form between inputs and outputs or a priori subjective
intervention concerning the weights of indicators. This novel
decision-supporting tool aims to provide a scientific basis for informed
decisions (recommendations for designers, stakeholders or policy makers). It
also demonstrates the benefits of a LC perspective and helps to transfer
research results and insights into current building design practice. The main objectives of the
project are: i) Develop an integrated (environmental and cost) streamlined LC
approach to support early-stage decisions in building retrofits; ii) Apply the streamlined approach to assess the environmental and cost
performance of various building retrofits in Portugal for three types of
single-family houses (detached, semi-detached and row) combined with three
types of wall systems (single-pane stone, and single- and double-pane brick
walls) representing buildings from distinct time periods (historic buildings
built before 1919, buildings from 1919 to 1960, and from 1960 to 2000). These assessments will
include a sensitivity analysis to three climate regions and two alternative
residential occupancy patterns; iii) Identify key drivers
of environmental and cost impacts of building retrofits in South European
climates and provide recommendations; iv) Develop a tool
integrating a streamlined LC approach and DEA for eco-efficiency analysis and
identify the most eco-efficient retrofit strategies; v) Implement the tool as a
spreadsheet-based software prototype, which may later be
developed into a commercial product. This project will advance
methodological frameworks by developing a novel streamlined LC approach
integrated with DEA to support the decision-making process of building
retrofits. It will also provide insights and recommendations for current building retrofit design practice. The project will be
also relevant for the international scientific community, as the framework
developed here could be further adapted to other products/systems. In order to carry out the StreamLAB project, we gathered a multidisciplinary team
composed of researchers with complementary expertise and solid track records from three Portuguese Research Units
(CIE-ADAI, INESCC and CeBER-UC) which will
collaborate with a team from MIT. The research team has large and diversified
experience in LC modeling and assessment of various systems, including
buildings (CIE-ADAI), as well as a strong background and experience in
uncertainty analysis, statistically-based models, optimization and DEA
(INESCC and CeBER-UC). The MIT team collaborating
in this project has relevant experience in creating decision-supporting tools
to assess environmental impacts and costs of buildings. |
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Projeto cofinanciado pela União Europeia.
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