Incorporating Big Data into Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings and Green Building Rating SystemsMelissa M. Bilec Co-authors: William O. Collinge, Cassandra L. Thiel, Nicole Campion, Sami Al-Ghamdi, Kullapa Soratana, Amy E. Landis

University of PittsburghDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Arizona State UniversitySchool of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment

North America-East Asia Workshop on Big Data Analytics for IBSR Research, Beijing, 2014.

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Motivation/Preamble

--Where can we get our big data?

--What do we need?

--What is our goal? Sustainability and HEALTH

Big data analytics supporting GBRS and LCA to inform green building decisions, sustainability, and health.• Review green building rating systems (GBRS) and

sustainability metrics to understand the potential of incorporating of big data specific to buildings. – Can ‘certified’ green buildings act as our largest sample set?

• Discuss life cycle assessment (LCA) as a preferred (?) method of quantifying sustainability in the built environment.

• Highlight Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as a primary example of a GBRS that includes – to some extent - LCA.

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The Building Focus

People spend 90% of their time indoors

73% of U.S. electricity use [DOE, 2010]

40% of U.S. primary energy

39% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions

75% of U.S. material use (along with road construction) [Wagner, 2002]

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Green Building Rating Systems (GBRS)

• Many systems exist worldwide• LEED is predominant in the US• Can be

subjective• Driven by

consensus rather than data/science

Reed, Bilos, Wilkinson and Schulte. 2009 “International Comparison of Sustainable Rating Tools”. Journal of Sustainable Real Estate.

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Life Cycle Assessment

• Quantifies environmental impacts of all stages in the life of a product or process

An integral part of BUILD: BARRIERS, UNDERSTANDING, INTEGRATION –LIFE-CYCLE DEVELOPMENT

Our vision is to develop a multi-faceted, dynamic life cycle based framework that quantifies the environmental impacts of buildings and aids in decision-making at multiple scales, in doing so advance the fundamental science and ultimate applicability of life cycle assessment.

Test Beds: Three high-performance buildings in Pittsburgh, PA

8 Advancing Green Building Rating Systems Using Life Cycle Assessment

12%

4%

21%

25%

30%

9%

LEED v2.0, 2005

19%

10%

34%

13%

15%

5%4%

LEED v3.0, 2009

LCA & LEED• LCA integration appeared in

many panel discussions and working groups of the USGBC beginning in 2006, leading to 2009 version

• S l o w integration of LCA into LEED

• The 2009 version introduced a fundamental change in how LEED credits were ‘weighted.’ This weighting was adapted using LCA considerations that give the largest share of points to the energy section for its significant environmental and human health impacts

• LEED v4 (2013) incorporates LCA further through credits for building life-cycle impact reduction, building and material reuse, or whole-building life-cycle assessment

Sustainable Sites (SS) Water Efficiency (WE)Energy and Atmosphere (EA)

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LCA and GBRS – LEED V4

• Materials and Resources Credit 1 – Building Life Cycle Impact Reduction– Re-use a historic or abandoned/

blighted building (5 points)

– Building material re-use – (2-4 points)

– Whole building LCA – (3 points)

• MR Credit 13.2 – Environmental Product Declarations (2 points)

Image credit: USGBC, LEED

V4 Reference Guide

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LCA and GBRS – More work• Even in green buildings, most LCA impacts are

in the use phase• Use phase impacts not part of the LCA-LEED

integration to date

-20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Percentage of Environmental Impacts by LCA Phase

Recycling Phase

Raw Material Phase

Maunfacuturing Phase

Use Phase

Disposal Phase

The Total Environmental Impacts of a Building's Life Cycle by Phase

Green Buildin

g

Typical Buildin

g

Image credit: Venkatarama Reddy and Jagadish 2003

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LCA and GBRS – More Work

LCA

Indoor

impacts

Use phase energy impacts

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Big Data and Building Feedback

Embedded sensors

Building automation and control systems

Data historians

Building dashboards

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Big Data and Building Feedback

• Embedded sensor systems for material and energy flows; indoor environmental quality (IEQ)

IEQ – AirCuity’s OptiNet System Electricity – Plugwise Home

Basic

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Big Data and Building Feedback

• Building automation systems provide remote access for facilities managers to monitor and control

Automated Logic Corporation’s WebCTRL BAS interface

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Big Data and Building Feedback

• Data historians provide access to massive archives of spatially and temporally explicit building information

OSISoft Corporation’s Plant Information (PI) System

Lucid – Building Dashboard Networkhttp://www.luciddesigngroup.com/index.php

Big Data and Building Feedback• Building dashboards provide overview

information for the public/casual user and moderate analytics

Big Data and GBRS

• Hundreds or thousands of real-time sensed and/or model-predicted points in each building, combined with many buildings using similar systems, provide an unprecedented opportunity for design feedback and learning.

• Partnerships with GBRS maybe able to provide the necessary leverage to encourage/require the transparency of the data for the research community.

Example of LCA, GBRS, & BD

• LCA adds an additional dimension of potential big data contribution

• Links throughout each building’s life cycle to hundreds or thousands of upstream and downstream processes on a manufacturing basis.

• Building LCAs becomes more dynamic (i.e. accurate)• Incorporate real-time data from building automation

system data• Pair BAS energy data with new tool, AVERT -

http://epa.gov/avert/• BAS-integrated occupancy and indoor air quality

monitoring systems can provide estimates of the internal building exposure of the building’s occupants to various pollutants and other indoor environmental conditions

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Summary• Green Building Rating Systems and Life Cycle Assessment have helped to

improve the environmental performance of building industries around the world

• Big Data can be used to improve the functionality and practicality of LCAs and the actual performance of green buildings.

• Energy use is a logical first step; indoor environmental quality can be similarly monitored and assessed using complementary sensors.

• The diverse nature of the collected data with respect to quantity and quality, as well as the diverging foci of users, call for an integrated - though not necessarily top-down - approach to system architecture and quality assurance.

• The architecture, engineering, construction and building science research community can drive the organization of big data for the built environment with the goal of continuous improvement of the indoor and outdoor environment.

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Acknowledgments

• Support

• NSF EFRI-SEED Grant #1038139 “BUILD – Barriers, Understanding, Integration – Life cycle Development”

• Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation

• EPA STAR

Thanks! Questions?

mbilec@pitt.edu

22 Advancing Green Building Rating Systems Using Life Cycle Assessment

Renewable Energy

• IEA1 predicts high-growth in the renewable energy utilization in all sectors with the highest increases in the building sector

• Renewable energy plays a big role in the sustainable development through the achievement of its goals

• Priorities in the relationship between renewable energy and sustainable development vary from one country to another, depending on many domestic and international issues

1 International Energy Agency (IEA), World energy outlook 2010.

IEA Prediction fro Renewable Sources in 2035, (excluding traditional biomass)

Buildings Sector

Industrial Sector

Transportation Sector

34%23%

15%

66%77%

85%

Renewable Sources Non-Renewable Sources

23 Advancing Green Building Rating Systems Using Life Cycle Assessment

Renewable in LEED

• The renewable energy has been a LEED focus since the beginning through a credit for on-Site renewable and a credit for green power

• requirements: green power credit has seen a significant increase compared to a clear decrease in on-Site renewable credit

• Percentages: despite that green power credit remained unchanging, but on-site renewable credit decreased greatly

• Important issues: (i.e. credits/points weighing, referenced standard)

Arizona State University Campus Metabolism

Community Scale

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LEED Rating Systems

• LEED has evolved through several versions, 1998 to 2013

• LEED is the US market dominant green building rating systems and is being adapted to many markets worldwide

• The LEED system has rapidly expanded into a global system to cover most of the world (4,900 cities)