Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

India is one of the largest and fastest urbanising countries in the world and AEC industry accounts for 40-45% of the total energy consumption. Our energy requirement is predominantly met by consuming non-renewable energy sources and this trend is heavily impacting our natural environment. The choice of materials and technology used can significantly affect the amount of energy embodied in a building. Embodied energy varies between products and materials depending upon where and how they are sourced, which is not included in the current embodied energy calculation. Also various methods for calculating embodied energy have varying levels of completeness and accuracy. Current systems assign an embodied energy value to a particular material; whereas the same material sourced from different locations, by different means of transportation, installed using different construction system results in different embodied energy. This study critically reviews the existing methods and addresses the inadequacies and shortcoming in. It provides a GIS based spatial model developed using system dynamics. This model can conceptualise the flow of materials right from its extraction to application at building level incorporating all the parameters that adds to the embodied energy of the material. The study concludes that a system dynamics approach incorporating spatial parameters is the most appropriate method for calculating the embodied energy of a building in a comprehensive manner. Building designers and clients can use this model more precisely for embodied energy calculation which would also be a decision making tool that can help the choice of materials and construction system.