This paper presents example environmental audits for four alternate structural systems used in typical warehouse buildings: concrete masonry, tilt-up wall, steel system, and wood. An environmental audit as defined in this work is an evaluation of the "debit side" impacts, in terms of energy consumption and environmental emissions, incurred in the extraction and processing of materials for building products to the point where they are ready to install in a building.Though comprehensive auditing methods will eventually become available, the work reported in this paper incorporates energy and air pollution audits as the most currently accessible and quantifiable indicators based on available data.The analysis shows that massive structural systems are inherently more energy intensive than lightweight ones by virtue of the mass of material in the walls which dominates the relatively lightweight horizontal structures common to all. Moreover, their CO2 and other air pollution indices are also significantly higher. The long span members are the dominant single energy and pollution component in the environmental audit of a structural system, accounting for between 74% and 79% of the total energy required for production of materials, and contributing from 59% to 79% of the aggregate air pollution from manufacturing industries. Of the lightweight examples, the steel frame building was the least energy intensive by a small margin, while the wood frame contributed least to CO2 emission by a substantial margin. Key words: audit, energy, environment, pollution, structure, warehouse.
Stochastic Simulation of Mould Growth Performance of Wood-Frame Building Envelopes under Climate Change: Risk Assessment and Error Estimation
