Sustainable Built Environment
Introduction
It seems that building development would present an impressive opportunity to reduce energy demand and also reduce carbon emissions effectively with combining current knowledge and expertise (Diakaki, & Kolokotsa, 2009). The highest cost-effectively feasible mitigation prospective is recommended to be found within the residential as well as the commercial sector. This is suggested to be producing a reduction of 29% in respect to the probable emission baseline for the year 2020.
Life Cycle Assessment is also known as (LCA) is a technique for evaluating environmental pack of processes as well as products in their life cycle. It attempts to classify and identify the environmental impact during all phases of the existence of a product and gives a figure which represents the ecological load of produce. LCA is a process which is becoming more extensively adopted within the context of public and global environmental regulations (Diakaki, & Kolokotsa, 2009). In an entire Life Cycle Assessment, materials and energy used alongside with ravage and pollutants given as an importance of a product, or movement are quantified more than the entire life cycle. The aim of LCA is to contrast the whole range of environmental impact assignable to goods to improve processes, sustain policy and offer a sound foundation for informed decisions.
An LCA permits a decision maker to study a whole product system thus avoiding the sub-optimization which could result if merely a single development were the focal point of the survey. For instance, when selecting between the two opponent products (Diakaki, & Kolokotsa, 2009). However, after doing an LCA, it might be determined that the first option created larger cradle-to-grave environmental effects when measured and assessed across all the three media such as air, water, land.
Methodology – Lifetime Inputs and Outputs
Based on the mentioned values of the life cycle assessment, that, at first sight, seem as ecological may have merely a worse environmental effect than a residence in lesser energy categories (Bribián, Usón, & Scarpellini, 2009). Correspondingly, it would appear illogical term known as electric green that is expected to be less fossil fuel consumption, although its production, expansion and renew the batteries would use more fossil fuel compared to traditional automobile traffic. Notably, the Athena Impact Estimator can be used to access the buildings. It is a free software tool which is designed to appraise entire buildings as well as assemblies based on the internationally accepted life cycle assessment method (Sharma, et al..2011). Applying the Impact Estimator, engineers, and architects, can assess and contrast the environmental implications or effects of industrial, commercial, institutional and residential designs, for new buildings as well as major renovations (Diakaki, & Kolokotsa, 2009). The Impact Estimator places the environment on an equivalent footing with other extra traditional design criterion at the theoretical phase of a project. With Athena's verified LCA instrument evaluates the environmental effect of the project. Importantly, the Estimator takes into description the environmental consequences of the material manufacturing, as well as resource removal and recycled content, related transportation, on-site construction and the demolition and disposal.
The functional, energy plus environmental demands and their costs are estimated as follows:
Heat loss limit < xx W/m2,K
Solar heat load feature in W/m2 or solar opening in m2 eq. South glazing / m2 hot
area > x % in winter
Energy or primary energy < xx kWh/m2,year
Emissions CO2 emissions < xx g/m2, year
Fraction of renewable > x percent
The aim at this stage is to investigate whether a passive or rather low energy option is a possible choice and what it implies concerning decreased environmental impact (Ramesh, Prakash, & Shukla, 2010).
Results life cycle impact assessment
The concept of LCA calculations is not complicated. For every life cycle phase, one needs to investigate the quantity of materials as well as the energy consumed and the emissions linked to processes (Diakaki, & Kolokotsa, 2009). The latter are calculated with characterization factors about their energy to cause an environmental effect. A single specific emission is selected as the indication, and the result is equally presented with respect to the impact of the mentioned substance.
The table below shows Calculation of environmental effect according to the LCA.
Importantly, sustainability of the built environment allows everyone to live well in their environmental limits. This sustainability can be achieved through construction, design, and management. Therefore, the built environment is expected to inspire humans and make them feel proud of their local regions and diverse heritage. Besides, it should lower whole life carbon together with materials costs via efficient application of resources such as energy, water, and waste (Graham, 2009). Further, the built environment should offer a sustainable environment which contributes to human's physical and mental well-being and improves creativity and productivity.
Overall, the built environment should be flexible and compliant to future applications, and be resilient enough to cope with restricted effects of the climate change. Enabling societies to lead local replenishment developments with a neighborhood scale method remains to be the most cost-effective means to ensure villages, cities, and towns are appropriate for the future. By empowering public groups to stay united in tackling challenges of local priority. Such upgrades to the physical infrastructure help tackle climate change and deliver reliable as well as efficient transportation networks, advance health (Graham, 2009). It also helps in securing a healthy sustainable and natural environment, develops long-term housing furnish, exploits employment opportunities and makes communities cohesive and safer.
Discussions
Sustainable development should be viewed as a unique technique which satisfies the current needs without a compromise on the capacity of the future generations to meet their needs. It consists of the following pillars; social, cultural development, economic and environmental dimensions. The built environment incorporates a broad spectrum of effects on our lives. First, it contributes to land use, air pollution, and contamination, depletion of fossil fuel and water consumption, as well as impacts on the human health. Essentially, it contributes to climate change. Responsible urbanization behaviors on the micro as well as macro levels have the capacity to mitigate the negative impact that is caused by the built environment. Various analytic and philosophical aspects of sustainability draw towards and link numerous different areas and disciplines. The viability of the built environment is examined in various contexts of social, cultural environmental, social and economic aspects and managed over several measures of spaces and time. The focus starts from the macro level that ranges from the planet Earth towards the sustainability of different sectors including ecosystems. Also, the focus ranges from micro levels that are encompassed in a cautious building.
The LCA helps in measuring materials as an aspect that relates to factors related to sustainable materials such as the production of eco-materials, disposal of materials, recycling technologies and materials and innovative products. Another dimension of the built environment is the indoor environment that relates to factors connected to indoor environmental quality like thermal comfort, quality of air, quality of light, natural ventilation, acoustic quality, indoor chemical as well as pollutant source control (Golden, 2004). The management and operations aspects of the built environment relates to factors linked to healthy and productivity that includes neighborhood or building design management as well as the operations, plan, commissioning, organic waste management, and recycling management.
Notably, Architecture and Urbanism have an essential duty in the consumption as well as the distribution of space’s resources. The design and structure of the built environment have critical task of achieving reasonable and sustainable use. The emission of Carbon directly relies on how the modern cities are designed. To sustain humanity through climate change crises, there is need to create towns and buildings with sustainable and an impartial carbon footprint. In the view of Golden, (2004), the built environment dominates people's influence on nature, and it has remained to be one of the primary contributors to climate change, depletion of resources, overconsumption of waste, increased diminishing human health, as well as other major issues. The suitable route to reaching a sustainable future is by having a sustainable built environment. Therefore sustainability has to be the basis of every development and preservation planning in the future since human health plus the health of the entire human planet depends on the adoption of the sustainable practices.
Conclusions
In conclusion, sustainability is fundamental to the built environment since it is conservative human habitation which has so dramatically changed the environment. First, the two authors argue that sustainability is essential in the planning, construction, design, and conservation of the built environment, as it aids these activities to reflect various values and considerations. As a matter of fact, the practice of the built environment has conventionally incorporated values and fostered artistic expression, capacities which can lead to the sustainability association as a community that seeks for means to live in lively equilibrium with its diverse demands and the natural planet. Remarkably, the planning for sustainability within the built environment needs us to travel beyond our personal disciplines to reflect on the different economic, environmental, and social, impacts of the long-term decision people make. Any decision that seeks to build a full green development within an isolated location can pass the individual test of sustainability by its fall in storm-water runoff, ecological sustainability and energy-efficiency in the building although it may not succeed to become sustainable from a shipping perspective.
References
Bribián, I. Z., Capilla, A. V., & Usón, A. A. (2011). Life cycle assessment of building materials: Comparative analysis of energy and environmental impacts and evaluation of the eco-efficiency improvement potential. Building and Environment, 46(5), 1133-1140.
Bribián, I. Z., Usón, A. A., & Scarpellini, S. (2009). Life cycle assessment in buildings: State-of-the-art and simplified LCA methodology as a complement for building certification. Building and Environment, 44(12), 2510-2520.
Diakaki, C., & Kolokotsa, D. (2009). Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings. A Handbook of Sustainable Building Design and Engineering: An Integrated Approach to Energy, Health and Operational Performance, 99.
Golden, J. S. (2004). The built environment induced urban heat island effect in rapidly urbanizing arid regions–a sustainable urban engineering complexity. Environmental Sciences, 1(4), 321-349.
Graham, P. (2009). Building Ecology: First Principles for a sustainable built environment. John Wiley & Sons.
Ramesh, T., Prakash, R., & Shukla, K. K. (2010). Life cycle energy analysis of buildings: An overview. Energy and buildings, 42(10), 1592-1600.
Sharma, A., Saxena, A., Sethi, M., & Shree, V. (2011). Life cycle assessment of buildings: a review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15(1), 871-875.
Srinivasan, S., O’Fallon, L. R., & Dearry, A. (2003). Creating healthy communities, healthy homes, healthy people: initiating a research agenda on the built environment and public health. American journal of public health, 93(9), 1446-1450.
