Systemic view on reuse potential of building elements, components and systems: comprehensive framework for assessing reuse potential of building elements

Abstract

The physical impact of the increasing building mass in industrial and developing parts of the world is undeniable. In Europe, the building industry accounts for 38 percent of the total waste production, 40 percent of the CO2 emissions and 50 percent of all natural resources used within the building sector. (EIB 2015) Such negative impact of the construction sector is primarily related to the fact that built environment has been optimized for a linear system and one end of life option, demolition. The design of building products with high reuse potential is a necessity to move towards a construction industry that (1) creates building products with an increasing resource productivity; (2) is less dependent on virgin resources and; (3) contributes to the elimination of the concept of waste. As part of the EU Buildings as Material Banks project this paper will discuss the broader framework of a tool that will be able to assess reuse potential of building and its components and enhance their future environmental and economic value propositions. Due to the systemic nature of the tool the paper will showcase several case projects and the assessment of reuse potential indicators, measuring functional, technical and material dependences on three levels of a building’s composition (i.e. building, system, and component). Further to this the relation will be made between indicators of reuse potential with different value propositions based on which the framework for measuring environmental and economic impact of different reuse options will be established. Finally the paper will elaborate on gaps between design related data and existing capacity of Building Information Modeling (BIM) for the purpose of integrating the Reuse Potential Tool with BIM .