Title: A contextual approach to environmental impact assessment

Authors: Robert Ries

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 949 Benedum Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15261-2294, USA

Abstract: This paper presents an environmental impact assessment method implemented in a computational tool for the environmental evaluation of building designs. The method is an extension of a traditional material-focused life cycle analysis (LCA), and is based on a spatial allocation for emissions and resource usage. The implementation described here uses a model of an evaluative environment, which allows for the consideration of the rate and the spatial distribution of an environmental load in the indicator calculation.

Keywords: life cycle assessment; environmental impact analysis; sustainable building design tools.

DOI: 10.1504/IJETM.2002.000776

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2002 Vol.2 No.1/2/3, pp.8-21

Published online: 21 Jul 2003 *

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