| Title: |
The Hidden Environmental Impact of Building Junctions in a Flemish Single-Family Dwelling |
| Authors: |
Decorte, Y; De Keyzer, J; Roos, L; Steeman, M |
| Source: |
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science ; volume 1554, issue 1, page 012001 ; ISSN 1755-1307 1755-1315 |
| Publisher Information: |
IOP Publishing |
| Publication Year: |
2025 |
| Description: |
The environmental impact of buildings is commonly assessed through life cycle assessment (LCA). Conventional LCA studies estimate a building’s embodied impact—including production, transport, installation, and disposal of materials—by scaling the impact of building elements from a square-meter basis to the entire building. However, this one-dimensional approach overlooks the embodied impact of building junctions, which require additional materials such as gutters, structural elements, and windowsills. Moreover, the measurement conventions—whether internal or external dimensions are used—can cause over- or underestimations. Whereas the thermal performance of building junctions has been extensively studied, their contribution to the embodied impact of buildings remains unknown. This study quantifies the embodied impact of 31 unique building junctions in a single-family dwelling in Flanders, Belgium. A three-step approach is proposed, comparing the one-dimensional scaling approach with a more detailed two-dimensional assessment. Correction factors are derived for each junction based on the difference between both approaches, distinguishing between errors due to measurement conventions and additional materials. The correction factors are then applied to adjust the building’s embodied impact to highlight the importance of building junctions in LCAs. The results identify critical junctions and demonstrate that accounting for the embodied impact of junctions increases the case study’s embodied impact by 15%. This increase is particularly due to additional materials at junctions, as the under- and overestimations from the measurement convention largely offset each other. The proposed methodology can be applied to buildings with different geometries, typologies, and materials to establish universal correction factors that simplify the integration of building junctions into conventional LCA calculations and enhance their accuracy. |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| Language: |
unknown |
| DOI: |
10.1088/1755-1315/1554/1/012001 |
| DOI: |
10.1088/1755-1315/1554/1/012001/pdf |
| Availability: |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1554/1/012001; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1554/1/012001; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1554/1/012001/pdf |
| Rights: |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; https://iopscience.iop.org/info/page/text-and-data-mining |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.82F3C89A |
| Database: |
BASE |