Integrating effects of overheating on human health into buildings’ life cycle assessment

Abstract

Purpose

Due to climate change, the severity and length of heat waves are increasing, and this trend is likely to continue while mitigation efforts are insufficient. These climatic events cause overheating inside buildings, which increases mortality. Adaptation measures reduce overheating but induce environmental impacts, including on human health. This study aims to integrate the overheating-related effects on human health in building LCA to provide a design aid combining mitigation and adaptation.

Methods

In a novel approach, an existing building LCA tool is utilised to evaluate life cycle impacts, including damage to human health expressed in DALYs. The overheating risk is then evaluated using an existing dynamic thermal simulation (DTS) tool and prospective climatic data. Overheating is expressed as a degree-hour (DH) indicator, which integrates both the severity (temperature degrees over a comfort threshold) and the duration (hours). By assuming proportionality between DALYs and DH × area in a first step, the 2003 heat wave mortality data, 2003 climatic data, and a simplified model of the national residential building stock were used to identify a characterisation factor, which can then be used to evaluate DALYs corresponding to any building using DH obtained by thermal simulation.

Results

The proposed overheating model not only allows to derive a characterisation factor for overheating to be used in building LCA but also provides practical insights. The first estimation of the characterisation factor is 1.35E-8DALY. DH-1.m-2. The method was tested in a case study corresponding to a social housing apartment building in France built in 1969 without insulation. The thickness of insulation implemented in the renovation works was varied. For this specific case study, the contribution of overheating is significant, ranging from 1.1E-5DALY.m-2.y-1 to 2.2E-5DALY.m-2.y-1, comparable to the contribution of heating. DTS and LCA results found an optimal thickness, minimising the human health indicator in DALYs. This underscores the potential of active cooling to reduce human health impacts, especially if it consumes electricity produced by a photovoltaic system integrated in the building.

Conclusion

Combining DTS and LCA makes it possible to evaluate damage indicators on human health, including building life cycles (e.g., material and energy) and overheating-related impacts. An application on a case study shows this method’s feasibility and gives a first order of magnitude of overheating health impacts induced by buildings. A more sophisticated model could replace the assumed proportionality between DALYs and DH.