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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 102
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CIVIL, STRUCTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING COMPUTING
Edited by:
Paper 149

Environmental Impact Assessment of the Life Cycle of a Timber Building

D.N. Kaziolas1, I. Zygomalas2, G.E. Stavroulakis3 and C.C. Baniotopoulos4

1Technological Educational Institute of Kavala, Kavala, Greece
2Institute of Metal Structures, Department of Civil Engineering
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
3Institute of Computational Mechanics and Optimization
Department of Production Engineering and Management
Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece
4Institute of Metal Structures, Department of Civil Engineering
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
and Chair of Sustainable Energy Systems, School of Civil Engineering
The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
D.N. Kaziolas, I. Zygomalas, G.E. Stavroulakis, C.C. Baniotopoulos, "Environmental Impact Assessment of the Life Cycle of a Timber Building", in , (Editors), "Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 149, 2013. doi:10.4203/ccp.102.149
Keywords: timber structures, timber buildings, environmental impact, life cycle assessment.

Summary
Timber construction offers a number of advantages in terms of sustainability in comparison with other construction technologies. This can partly be attributed to the fact that structural timber products often require less processing for their manufacturing compared to other construction products and their sustainability is therefore relatively increased. As a result, structures such as timber buildings are associated with increased sustainability potential and are therefore selected as sustainable solutions for the construction of housing, commercial or other types of building projects. The current research, described in this paper, is aimed at the quantification of the environmental impact caused by the construction of timber buildings. A case study is used as the basis for the calculations which take into account the whole life cycle of the timber building examined. A life cycle assessment is conducted and the environmental impact assessment results are calculated according to the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology. The interpretation of the results leads to conclusions regarding the level and type of environmental impact caused by the life cycle of timber building projects.

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