全球变化知识资源中心

Suitable methods and indicators to address the sustainability of resource use in the buildings sector are still in their infancy. Indicators and sustainability assessment schemes so far focus on the availability of natural resources, while the efficiency of their use is widely neglected. This article focuses on the assessment of the material resource use in buildings (abiotic raw material including energetic material), and the applicability of material input indicators, Raw Material Input (RMI) and Total Material Requirement (TMR), within life cycle assessment (LCA) using a contemporary database. The indicators cover the life-cycle-wide cumulative input of raw materials (RMI) and the total primary materials requirements (TMR) which in relation to the functionality of buildings ought to be minimized when resource efficiency shall be increased. The applicability of the resource use indicators in addition to the corresponding Global Warming Impact (GWI) is tested for a virtual design of a multi-family building. Use of resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are determined per square meter of usable floor area. The calculations comprised the production phase of the construction materials and the use phase of the building with five alternatives of exterior walls using GaBi XIV construction materials database. Results show that accounting for material input indicators i.e. RMI and TMR could significantly contribute to the reduction of a building's material resource use and explicitly define the actual input weight of each material resource taken from nature and the accompanied ecological rucksack within LCA framework.