The Environmental Sustainability Study of an Airport Building System Based on an Integrated LCA-Embodied Energy (Emergy)-ANN Analysis

Abstract

From a global perspective, the ecological sustainability of building systems has always been a hot research topic, especially in China, where the annual amount of new construction is nearly half of the world. The difficulty is making a complete and accurate ecological assessment of the building system. This study has designed and adopted the LCA-Emergy-ANN framework to assess and analyze an airport building system for sustainability. The results demonstrate that building material emergy and operational stage emergy play a critical role and account for 92.4% of the entire emergy, which are the primary contributors. As the vital indicator, the emergy sustainability index (ESI) is 0.669, which is unsustainable (The eligibility standard is 1). Simultaneously, to ensure the accuracy of the data results, sensitivity analysis was performed. The artificial neural network (ANN) was used by integrating the LCA method and emergy approach to predict the sustainability trend in the long run. In the end, the optimization strategy is proposed to enhance the sustainability of the building system.

The Sustainability Study and Exploration in the Building Commercial Complex System Based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)–Emergy–Carbon Emission Analysis

“…According to the standards for the use of public buildings in China [55], the fiftieth anniversary building life cycle is considered and calculated. It was found that the carbon emission from electricity usage accounts for approximately 76.2% of the total carbon emission in the building operation phase, significantly more than the carbon emission from heat (approximately 22.8%).…”