Earthquake and deterioration inclusive probabilistic life cycle assessment (EDP-LCA) framework for buildings

Abstract

With increasing demand to reduce the carbon emission of buildings, it is crucial to quantify the life cycle environmental impact of new buildings, including the environmental impact due to natural hazards, such as earthquakes. This study presents a novel comprehensive probabilistic framework to quantify the environmental impact of buildings, including uncertainties in the material extraction and production, transportation, construction, seismic exposure and aging (including deterioration), and end-of-life stages. The developed framework is used to quantify the environmental impact of a 3-story residential building located in Vancouver, Canada. The results show that there is a significant variation in the environmental impact of the prototype building in each stage of the life cycle assessment. If the prototype building is hit by the design level earthquake, it is expected that the median environmental impact of the prototype will be further increased by 42%. In addition, by accounting for the probability of occurrence of different earthquakes within a 50-year design life of the prototype building, the earthquake related damage will result in an additional 5% of the initial carbon emission of the building. This shows the importance of including earthquake hazard and deterioration in whole building life cycle assessments.