Embodied carbon assessment of residential housing at urban scale

A great majority of the previous research put extensive efforts on the evaluation of life cycle impacts and carbon footprint of single buildings. Analysis on single buildings often excludes components related with urban scale such as construction of infrastructure, distance to city centre and transportation. Research on neighbourhood-scale settlements is necessary to further develop the understanding of the environmental impact of built-environment. This study aims to develop a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework for the embodied carbon assessment of the built environment at neighbourhood scale. The study validates the results on three neighbourhood-scale mass housing projects in Ankara, Turkey. Embodied carbon assessment of these projects were conducted in order to generate a reference model of mass-housing projects. A data management framework for carbon assessment was also provided in the study. According to the results, an average of 409.2 kg(CO2-eq)/m(2) originated at the neighbourhood level including emissions from the buildings, structural landscape and transportation infrastructure. Buildings contribute 272.4 kg(CO2-eq/m2), which comprise 66.6% of the total emissions. On the other hand, 37.4 kg(CO2-eq/m2) (9.1%) originate from structural landscape and 99.4 kg(CO2-eq/m2) (24.3%) originate from transportation infrastructure. The results reveal the necessity to widen the assessment boundaries when investigating embedded carbon in larger scale built environment for fairer results. The outputs of the model may yield valuable inputs for designers and urban planners throughout their decision-making processes.