Life cycle assessment of building materials and structures in Germany.

Life-Cycle-Assessment (LCA) becomes more and more an important tool for industry to choose the adequate material or technique leading to an expected product quality from environmental point of view. As the environmental aspects are just one part of the decision making process, economical aspects have to be implemented as well. Sustainable construction is a major driving force of building and construction technology. The building sector uses extensive quantities of natural resources, raw materials and energy. The reason is to change parts of the natural environment in order to create (necessary) human surroundings. If the environmental effects of buildings will be described in it's entirety design, construction, use, demolition of buildings, respectively the whole live cycle must be taken into consideration. As the system is complex, the architect/ planer needs supporting tools leading to acceptable decisions, concerning environmental effects of the choice, yet during the planing process. Authorities need brief and reliable background information, if decisions of environmental consequences are to be made. Considering this facts in 1994 IKP started a research project with more than 50 producers of building materials, components and manufactures of buildings. The projects follow two main goals. A database of the most important materials and components is in development with the producing industry, to create LCA's under comparable system boundaries with actual data, and developing a methodology to integrate environmental aspects in the planning process. The approach is linking methods like computer aided design, simulation of energy consumption during utilisation of buildings and possibilities of waste treatment. The database management and the assessment is supported by the !KP-Software "GaBi".