Session
TU.2.A || Mainstreaming Construction LCA – Based on an Open Data Network

Authors
Horn, Rafael; Borschewski, David; Ebertshäuser, Sebastian; Jäger, Michael; Mahler, Boris

Abstract
While LCA tools for the assessment of buildings are available for more than 15 years, their application is mainly limited to research and sustainability certification. The upcoming sustainability requirements driven by EUs green deal as well as the EU taxonomy require a professionalization of LCA tools and a significant extension of their scope and target users. LCA tools aim to provide comprehensive data for practitioners and to maximize the modelling flexibility while ensuring consistency in underlying assumptions and frameworks. Therefore, modeling data (inventory level) has to be complemented by environmental assessment results (impact assessment data). These LCIA data are highly heterogeneous in specificity, validity and quality. For LCA tools this leads to the necessity of data preprocessing to ensure harmonization, quality, compatibility, completeness and nomenclature. To provide a consistent structure, a harmonized and machine readable hub to merge different data sources is necessary. An example of such tool is the web software Generis® that was relaunched in 2020 building on 10 years of learning with a preliminary tool. In Generis, consistency as well as compatibility of LCIA data is ensured through using the ökobau.dat as versioning backbone and supplementing them with specific data of various sources that are processed by the development team. It allows for import of both ilcd format and manual import using an excel template. The recently developed ECO portal offers further optimization potentials through streamlining of this integration workflow. On inventory level there are several options available. Next to the handling of predefined constructions, an import interface based on the energy modelling standard DIN V 18599 is available. Furthermore, an IFC based import interface based on the BIM2LCA4ip approach generally allows to make use of BIM data. Finally, the results are provided via spreadsheet, html sheet or through a machine readable XML.