Session 1.3
Decarbonizing and Designing with Data
Synopsis:
This lecture will provide a deep dive into how to track embodied carbon data throughout the design process. We will focus on ways to structure the data and present environmental impacts in a way that allows project teams to better understand their decisions and opportunities for improvement.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identifying the factors that contribute to uncertainty in embodied carbon metrics.
2. How to develop carbon accounting workflows that allow for flexibility at various stages of design.
3. Exploring tools and visuals that most effectively communicate carbon impacts.
4. How to achieve more accurate quantities from BIM data.
Body:
Despite the growing recognition that the building industry urgently needs to reduce embodied carbon emissions, we continue to struggle on how to track and implement decarbonization strategies in practice. To meet the various industry benchmarks and environmental impact reduction goals, many AEC firms have begun tracking metrics related to carbon accounting. While tools such as Life Cycle Assessments have become more standard, they are often completed too late in the process to significantly impact a project. The complexity in both tracking and understanding carbon accounting metrics has proven to be a challenge that often inhibits opportunities for improvements during design. In order to effectively work with these metrics, we must learn how to accurately extract them and communicate them in ways that are both clear and actionable.
Tools such as BIM and various data visualization platforms have allowed the industry to become accustomed to tracking clearly defined metrics such as material tonnages or square feet throughout the life of a project. However, carbon accounting metrics often come along with added levels of complexity and uncertainty due to a variety of factors such as supply chains, project regions, and building lifespans. To better understand the potential that designers have to reduce the embodied carbon in their designs, it is important that we consider these complexities and uncertainties as design decisions are being made.
This presentation will review a variety of approaches that we’ve undertaken as structural engineers to better track our embodied carbon quantities throughout various stages of the design process. We will cover the details of the data sources used to store such metrics as well as the tools and visualizations that we utilize to communicate these metrics to our internal design teams as well as our clients. The examples discussed will serve to highlight both the challenges and successes we’ve encountered throughout our journey towards better carbon accounting.