A life cycle assessment of a ‘minus carbon’ refugee house: global warming potential and sensitivity analysis

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>Over the last eight years, the Middle East has experienced a series of high profile conflicts which have resulted in over 5.6 million Syrians forced to migrate to neighbouring countries within the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region or to Europe. That have exerted huge pressure on hosting countries trying to accommodate refugees in decent shelters and in quick manner. Temporary shelters normally carry a high environmental burden due to their short lifespan, and the majority are fabricated from industrialised materials. This study assesses the carbon impact for a minus carbon experimental refugee house in Sweden using life cycle assessment (LCA) as tool. SimaPro and GaBi software were used for the calculations and the ReCiPe midpoint method for impact assessment. The results show that using local plant-based materials such as straw, reeds and wood, together with clay dug from close to the construction site, can drastically reduce the carbon footprint of temporary shelters and even attain a negative carbon impact of 226.2 kg CO2 eq/m2. Based on the results of the uncertainty importance analysis, the overall global warming potential impact without and with sequestration potential are mostly sensitive to the variability of the GWP impact of wood fibre insulation.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>The methodology is designed to calculate the GWP impact of the refugee house over its entire life cycle (production, operation and maintenance and end of life). Then, the sensitivity analysis was performed to explore the impact of input uncertainties (selection of material from the database and the method) on the total GWP impact of the refugee house with and without sequestration. The ISO standards (International Standard 14040 2006; International Standard 14044 2006) divide the LCA framework into four steps of Goal and scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>This study has shown an example for proof of concept for a low impact refugee house prototype using straw, reeds, clay, lime and wood as the principle raw materials for building construction. Using natural materials, especially plant-based fibres, as the main construction materials, proved to achieve a minus carbon outcome over the life cycle of the building. The GWP of the shelter house without and with sequestration are found to be 254.7 kg CO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> eq/m<jats:sup>2</jats:sup> and -226.2 kg CO2 eq/m2, respectively.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>As there are still very few studies concerned with the environmental impact of temporary refugee housing, this study contributes to the pool of knowledge by introducing a complete LCA calculation for a physical house prototype as a proof of concept on how using low impact raw materials for construction combined with passive solutions for heating and cooling can reach a minus carbon outcome. The GWP of the shelter house without and with sequestration are found to be 254.7 kg CO2 eq/m2 and -226.2 kg CO2 eq/m2.</jats:p></jats:sec>

Sustainable Development Goals and the future of architectural education – cultivating SDGs-centred architectural pedagogies

“…From a technical-experimental perspective, the work of Dabaieh et al (2020) assesses the carbon impact for a minus carbon experimental refugee house in Sweden, utilising life cycle assessment as a tool for this experiment. The results demonstrate that using local plant-based materials such as straw, reeds and timber together with clay dug from the vicinity of the construction site can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of temporary shelters, while SDGs-centred architectural pedagogies further attaining a negative carbon impact of 226.2 kg CO 2 eq/m.…”

“…From a technical-experimental perspective, the work of Dabaieh et al . (2020) assesses the carbon impact for a minus carbon experimental refugee house in Sweden, utilising life cycle assessment as a tool for this experiment.…”

Knowledge spaces in architecture and urbanism – a preliminary five-year chronicle

“…Their findings assert that visual communication by engineers increases the level of technical knowledge in design decisions made by architects and that this would enable designing buildings with low environmental impact while maximizing acceptance of the architects' proposals by the engineers. The work of (Dabaieh et al ., 2020) assesses the carbon impact for a minus carbon experimental refugee house in Sweden using life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool for this experiment. The results demonstrate that using local plant-based materials such as straw, reeds and timber, together with clay dug from nearby the construction site, can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of temporary shelters and can further attain a negative carbon impact of 226.2 kg CO 2 eq/m 2 .…”

Developing migrants prototypes performance through bottom-up construction method

“…Moreover, from 2011 till now, Kurdish from Syria live as refugees in KRI [7]. The majority of migrants live in inefficient and uncomfortable transitional and temporary shelters this normally carries a high burden on the environment and host countries and cost billions of dollars for establishing due to the short lifespan of that shelters [8,9]. Currently, all advanced countries focused on building energy problems in different ways to use energy rationally and to preserve it is sources [10].…”

“…Wagemann [21] investigated in research titled From Shelter to Home different strategies for flexibility in post-disaster accommodation through movable buildings, design and construction methods. Rincon et al [22] analyzed and simulated the thermal behavior of dome shape earth-bag building in the Mediterranean climate in the same way, another study assessed the carbon impact of migrants shelters and resulted that using local materials like straw, wood, and clay, can extremely decrease the carbon footprint [8]. Ibrahim et al [23] observed the superiority of the adobe dome over other humanitarian agencies shelters as tent caravans in northern Syria through analyzed and compared based simulated research.…”