Evaluation of the Water Footprint of the Use and Maintenance of Buildings. Application to Dwellings in Andalusia, Spain

Abstract

Construction companies can both achieve financial success and reduce the environmental impacts of projects by carefully managing project budgets and simultaneously considering economic cost and environmental impacts. However, during their use and maintenance, buildings incur ramifications that go beyond their construction, which can be equally as significant. In this work, the water footprint (WF) of the maintenance-and-use stage of buildings is evaluated based on the information in the budgets of the construction projects. To this end, the computational tool PREDICE is employed. This tool forecasts indirect environmental impacts, by quantifying embodied impacts in construction materials and machinery from its life cycle analysis. This chapter also evaluates the direct impacts derived from the water consumption of the occupants based on reported data. This chapter explores residential building construction in Andalusia, Spain, using the construction cost database and work breakdown system of the region. The construction project, specifically its bill of quantities, is analysed to predict maintenance tasks throughout its life cycle. Ninety-five maintenance work units and their cost are defined and integrated in the PREDICE tool. Two actual projects are studied: a private single-family dwelling and a 10-storey multi-family building that provides social housing. The results demonstrate how the use of the tool makes it possible to locate the sources with the greatest impact throughout the life cycle, thereby facilitating decision-making regarding the reduction of economic and environmental costs. The WF of the dwellings consists of 80% direct consumption by dwellers while 20% is due to the water embodied in construction materials and energy production. Also, the embodied water in the energy production is significantly as high as the construction material footprint.