Minimizing Construction Emissions Using Building Information Modeling and Decision-Making Techniques

1. Introduction

Greenhouse gases have become a major scientific and political issue during the last decade. Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases play a major role in global warming. It is expected that the amount of greenhouse gases will be doubled in the next 20 years due to rapid growth in urbanization and inefficiencies of existing building stock (United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), 2009). Greenhouse gases have a great influence on global temperature and weather patterns. Seven of the top ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1998 in the United States (EPA, 2014). Average global temperature has increased by 0.85 °C from 1880 to 2012 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014). Carbon dioxide emissions should be decreased by 50% to 85% in order to keep the global increase in a mean temperature within 2°C-2.4°C (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007).

Temperature has increased in a very significant manner in the north, west of the United States and in Alaska (EPA, 2014). The average of North America covered by snow has decreased by a rate of 3100 square miles per year (EPA, 2015a). The increase in the heat waves occurred due to the climate change causes heat stroke and dehydration (EPA, 2015b). Greenhouse gases produced were 569.9 Mtco₂-Eq in the United Kingdom in 2013 (Department of Energy and Climate change, 2014). Carbon dioxide emissions produced were 5190 Mtco₂ in the United States and 1320 Mtco₂ in Japan in 2012 (PBL Netherlands environmental assessment agency, 2013).

Many countries have perceived the importance of reducing greenhouse gases which led to Kyoto protocol. Kyoto protocol is an international agreement that was set up in December 1997 and it was linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to outline reduction targets in greenhouse gases (Seo & Hwang, 2001). The European Union agreed to set a target of reducing greenhouse gases by 8% for the period 2008-2012 below 1990 levels (Viguier et al., 2003). The world average PM10 density is 71µg/m³. The density of particular matter in China is 98 µg/m³ in 2009 (Wu et al., 2015). Construction industry consumes considerable amount of greenhouse gases where it is responsible for 20.1% of the consumed energy worldwide (US Energy Information Administration, 2016). The consumed energy grows by an average of 2.1%/year from 2012 to 2040 (US Energy Information Administration, 2016).