Evolution of the life cycle of residential buildings in Andalusia: Economic and environmental evaluation of their direct and indirect impacts

This article presents a methodology to forecast, the environmental and economic impacts during the building life cycle. Residential buildings in Andalusia are studied during their useful life, from conception to demolition. To this end, the indicators of the footprint family, carbon, water, and ecological footprints, and that of embodied energy have been adapted for the evaluation of each phase of the cycle: transformation of land use (urbanisa-tion), construction, maintenance, and finally, demolition. The maintenance frequency and life expectancy of the construction elements are defined, as are the monetary and environmental updates. The budgets and the con-struction cost databases of each project taking place during the useful life are used for the resource inventories. The methodology enables the sources of greatest impact in each phase to be located, thereby facilitating the evaluation of the future effects of the design. Of the total impacts, 60% are incurred during the construction/ renovation work and 40% during direct use, which indicates that efforts should not only be focused on the energy efficiency during use, but also during the manufacturing and commissioning of construction materials.

Automated summary

This article introduces a methodology for forecasting the environmental and economic impacts throughout the building life cycle. Residential buildings in Andalusia were studied from conception to demolition. Indicators such as carbon footprint, water footprint, ecological footprint, and embodied energy were adapted for evaluating each phase of the cycle: land use transformation, construction, maintenance, and demolition. The methodology allows for identifying the sources of greatest impact in each phase, facilitating the evaluation of future design effects.