Ecotool COM.PRO: a Decision Support Model for the Environmental Building Design

The eco-compatibility of materials and products can be assumed as one of the most significant topics in the Environmental Design approach. Such significance is due to the increasing importance ascribed to environmental and energy performances of building materials on a European scale (e.g. EPD, Ecolabel, etc.) and on a national and local scale (e.g. new Regional Regulations and Building Codes). Consistently to activities carried out by worldwide Research Centers, the Department of Human Settlements Science and Technology of Polytechnic University of Turin has developed a database and a simplified tool both based on the Life Cycle Thinking Approach, Inventory Analysis Database and focused Impact Assessment Tools. “COM.PRO”: ecoCOMpatibility of PROducts is a simplified Ecotool aimed at assessing the eco-compatibility of building products in their own life cycle. COM.PRO is an application software based on an evaluation model that takes into account the following aspects: energy consumption and emissions due to production and transport, thermal performances in life span, durability and potential recycling. In detail COM.PRO would contribute to overcome the lack of environmental information related to building products complying with the requirements included in the building codes carried out by Regions and Local Authorities. 1 – Introduction The construction sector contributes significantly to environmental impacts and energy resources depletion. The available information are remarkable: in the energy global system the consumption related to primary energy used in building covers 30-40% of total amount. The green architecture or the environmental conscious design in the last decade has been mainly addressed to development of eco-technology systems for the heating and the cooling of buildings, according preferences to renewable sources such as solar, biomass, cross ventilation and passive cooling. Also building materials play an important role in energy conservation and environmental pollution. Comparison between energy use in building life span and building materials production says that the most part of energy consumptions affects heating and cooling needs, but pointing out to total flows of raw materials yearly extracted worldwide 40-50% are used in manufacturing building products. In particular construction sector is a heavy consumer of high embodied energy content, such as steel, aluminium and cement. Besides embodied energy, it is very important paying attention to land use for winning activities and to potential or not – recycling of construction and demolition wastes in order to keep intact the landscape and to reduce the energy use and the sources over an extended length of time. An environmental conscious selection of building materials concerns the assessment of ecological requirements related to raw material extraction, manufacturing, construction, use, maintenance and final disposal, including recycling scenarios. The paper deals with the development of a building products Ecological Indicators based on a specific database and a software aimed at assessing the building element or product ecocompatibility. These activities flow together in a comprehensive tool: “COM.PRO. ecoCOMpatibilty of PROducts” – a Decision Support Model for the Environmental Building Design. The first version of the database and the assessment procedure are now available. Basically the research project can be split up in three main activities: • Data gathering and data filling; • Database and software development; • Dissemination of the results through a web site. COM.PRO has been developed within the Building Environmental Assessment Interuniversitary Centre of Polytechnic of Turin, thanks to its laboratory test and to life cycle inventory database and impact assessment software available. A further upgrade of COM.PRO. will be soon available in order to improve the materials database and the evaluation system. 2 – Data gathering and data filling According to the above mentioned environmental requirements, as a result of the survey carried out on building codes and environmental assessment methods drawn up at so far, such part of the research activities was aimed at developing a set of Ecological Indicators. In order to fulfill a requirement in some situations a single Indicator is satisfactory, in other situations more then an Indicator is necessary for performing the environmental requirement (e.g. u-value calculation needs information about material density and the thickness layer of material).