Collection and use of environmental data on building materials.

Environmental assessment of building elements and buildings requires environmental data related to the entire life cycle of the materials, inventory tools and assessment models for environmental impacts important to buildings. For that reason environmental data have been collected for a number of building materials in a project linked to a major Danish project on Environmental Management in Building Design. On the basis of this project the paper focuses on choice of important environmental parameters, on choice of system boundaries and allocation rules, on data quality, and on environmental assessment of building elements. The environmental data are accepted by a number of relevant manufacturers and trade associations.