A holistic sustainability assessment of a university campus using life cycle approach

Abstract

The sustainability performances of campuses are of importance as it could model the efective sustainable initiatives that could be then applied to campuses by decision-makers and designers. Studies have been conducted on the environmental and economic assessment of campuses in specifcation with the identifcation of their carbon footprint and cost analysis, respectively. The studies have lacked a showcase of an ideal sustainable campus along with its urban and architectural features, facilities, and services through analyzing their social aspects as well. The objective of this study was to evaluate the sustainability of the Abdullah Gul University Sumer Campus to model a sustainable campus integrating the Environmental Life Cycle Assessment(E-LCA), the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and the Social Life Cycle Assessment using life cycle sustainability assessment approaches for the use-phase analysis of the campus. E-LCA was applied to quantify the global warming potential and cumulative energy demand based on International Organization for Standardization 14,040 and 14,044 by considering the gate-to-gate approach. The environmental assessment results showed that the global warming potential of the campus was 2.92 tCO2 eq./person, and the cumulative energy demand was found as 15.4 GJ/person. In LCC, the total cost of the campus was calculated as 200 US Dollars/person, and the energy cost is found as a major contributor with 86% of the total cost for the year of 2019. In the social performance assessment, it is found that the university has a weak social performance for the local community, the consumer, the worker, and the society