Environmental impact assessment model for buildings’ construction activities

Abstract

Building construction tasks generate many environmental impacts during their execution. The assessment and comparison of the ecological effects of different construction tasks can aid in reducing emissions from these tasks. This study introduces an impact assessment methodology to assess the ecological effects of different building construction tasks according to the construction equipment used. In this study, global warming potential (GWP₁₀₀), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), photochemical oxidation formation potential (POFP) and human toxicity potential (HTP) are considered as impact categories and evaluated at the global, regional and local levels. A case study of an administrative building in Egypt is used to validate the practicality of the developed model. The results demonstrate that the developed model can efficiently evaluate the ecological effects of construction tasks, and contractors can use it as a tool for choosing ecologically friendly construction strategies.

Keywords:

• Ecological effects
• building construction
• impact assessment
• equipment
• case study

Acknowledgments

The first author acknowledges the mission department of the ministry of higher education of Egypt for granting him scholarship to carry out his PhD study in Egypt–Japan University for Science and Technology and fully support this research work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.