The development of environmental load evaluation system of a standard Korean apartment house

The purpose of this study is to develop a simple method to assess the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted during the production of construction materials used in the construction of a standard Korean apartment house. This study is part of a wider effort to develop a system for evaluating the environmental load of construction during architectural planning and basic design phases.We formulated models of a standard Korean apartment house and a super high-rise apartment house, based on five reference floor plans for “green homes” provided by the Korean government. We identified major construction materials that account for over 80% of the CO2 emission that occurs during construction and built a database to evaluate the environmental loads of these materials according to house types described in terms of area, block type, combination of living units, or number of floors. We used the information in this database to develop technology to assess the amounts of CO2 that are emitted during the production of construction materials used to build residential apartment houses in Korea.