Session
WE.1.A || Life Cycle Sustainability in Construction and Renovation of Buildings

Authors
Pannier, Marie-Lise; Bigaud, David

Abstract
Driven by energy and digital transitions, the concept of Smart Buildings is gaining importance. Intelligent management systems of Smart Buildings are a promising way to mitigate the impacts of the construction sector. In most cases, such systems are designed with the aim to reduce the consumption of energy resources during the building use phase, while improving the occupants comfort and safety. However, the scope should be extended in order to assess the overall performances of Smart Buildings. First, instead of considering the use of energy resources only, other environmental problems and damages should be taken into account. Second, focusing on the use phase may be misleading and all life cycle stages of a building should be included in the scope. In this work, the environmental performance of a smart multifamily house is assessed using both dynamic building energy simulations and life cycle assessments (LCA). The LCA includes the impacts of the building as well as those of the installed connected devices. Construction, use, renovation and end-of-life stages are taken into account. Sixteen indicators are calculated based on environmental data from ecoinvent. Four energy management scenarios are investigated to analyse the comfort level and environmental impacts. Then results of each scenario is compared with the LCA results of a conventional building alternative (i.e. without energy management system), allowing to find if or to which extend the smart alternatives are more beneficial from an environmental perspective. Due to the lack of reliable environmental data for some processes and due to the uncertainty of some modelling hypothesis, especially regarding the smart sensors and actuators, uncertainty analysis based on Monte Carlo simulations will combined to the alternative comparisons in a next step.