A Global Database on Whole Life Carbon, Energy and Material Intensity of Buildings (CarbEnMats-Buildings)
Pre-release version (230920)
Data descriptor article (Preprint)
Data records / database (this repo)
- Latest version: Available via https://github.com/mroeck/carbenmats-buildings (main)
Globally, interest in understanding the life cycle related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of buildings is increasing. Robust data is required for benchmarking and analysis of parameters driving resource use and whole life carbon (WLC) emissions. However, open datasets combining information on energy and material use as well as whole life carbon emissions remain largely unavailable – until now.
We present a global database on whole life carbon, energy use, and material intensity of buildings. It contains data on more than 1,200 building case studies and includes over 300 attributes addressing context and site, building design, assessment methods, energy and material use, as well as WLC emissions across different life cycle stages. The data was collected through various meta-studies, using a dedicated data collection template (DCT) and processing scripts (Python Jupyter Notebooks), all of which are shared alongside this data descriptor.
This dataset is valuable for industrial ecology and sustainable construction research and will help inform decision-making in the building industry as well as the climate policy context.
The need for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across Europe require defining and implementing a performance system for both operational and embodied carbon at the building level that provides relevant guidance for policymakers and the building industry. So-called whole life carbon (WLC) of buildings is gaining increasing attention among decision-makers concerned with climate and industrial policy, as well as building procurement, design, and operation. However, most open buildings datasets published thus far have been focusing on building’s operational energy consumption and related parameters 1,2,2–4. Recent years furthermore brought large-scale datasets on building geometry (footprint, height) 5,6 as well as the publication of some datasets on building construction systems and material intensity 7,8. Heeren and Fishman’s database seed on material intensity (MI) of buildings 7, an essential reference to this work, was a first step towards an open data repository on material-related environmental impacts of buildings. In their 2019 descriptor, the authors present data on the material coefficients of more than 300 building cases intended for use in studies applying material flow analysis (MFA), input-output (IO) or life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. Guven et al. 8 elaborated on this effort by publishing a construction classification system database for understanding resource use in building construction. However, thus far, there is a lack of publicly available data that combines material composition, energy use and also considers life cycle-related environmental impacts, such as life cycle-related GHG emissions, also referred to as building’s whole life carbon.
The Global Database on Whole Life Carbon, Energy Use, and Material Intensity of Buildings (CarbEnMats-Buildings) published alongside this descriptor provides information on more than 1,200 buildings worldwide. The dataset includes attributes on geographical context and site, main building design characteristics, LCA-based assessment methods, as well as information on energy and material use, and related life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, commonly referred to as whole life carbon (WLC), with a focus on embodied carbon (EC) emissions. The dataset compiles data obtained through a systematic review of the scientific literature as well as systematic data collection from both literature sources and industry partners. By applying a uniform data collection template (DCT) and related automated procedures for systematic data collection and compilation, we facilitate the processing, analysis and visualization along predefined categories and attributes, and support the consistency of data types and units. The descriptor includes specifications related to the DCT spreadsheet form used for obtaining these data as well as explanations of the data processing and feature engineering steps undertaken to clean and harmonise the data records. The validation focuses on describing the composition of the dataset and values observed for attributes related to whole life carbon, energy and material intensity.
The data published with this descriptor offers the largest open compilation of data on whole life carbon emissions, energy use and material intensity of buildings published to date. This open dataset is expected to be valuable for research applications in the context of MFA, I/O and LCA modelling. It also offers a unique data source for benchmarking whole life carbon, energy use and material intensity of buildings to inform policy and decision-making in the context of the decarbonization of building construction and operation as well as commercial real estate in Europe and beyond.
All files related to this descriptor are available on a public GitHub repository and related release via Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8363895). The repository contains the following files:
- README.md is a text file with instructions on how to use the files and documents.
- CarbEnMats_attributes.XLSX is a table with the complete attribute description.
- CarbEnMats_materials.XLSX is the table of material options and mappings.
- CarbEnMats_dataset.XLSX is the building dataset in MS Excel format.
- CarbEnMats_dataset.txt is the building dataset in tab-delimited TXT format.
Please consult the related data descriptor article (linked at the top) for further information, e.g.:
- Methods (Data collection; data processing)
- Data records (Files; Sources; Attributes)
- Technical validation (Data overview; Data consistency)
- Usage Notes (Attribute priority; Scope summary, Missing information)
The dataset, the data collection template as well as the code used for processing, harmonization and visualization are published under a GNU General Public License v3.0. The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. We encourage you to review, reuse, and refine the data and scripts and eventually share-alike.
The CarbEnMats-Buildings database is the results of a highly collaborative effort and needs your active contributions to further improve and grow the open building data landscape. Reach out to the lead author (email, linkedin) if you are interested to contribute your data or time.
When referring to this work, please cite both the descriptor and the dataset:
- Descriptor: RÖCK, Martin, SORENSEN, Andreas, BALOUKTSI, Maria, RUSCHI MENDES SAADE, Marcella, RASMUSSEN, Freja Nygaard, BIRGISDOTTIR, Harpa, FRISCHKNECHT, Rolf, LÜTZKENDORF, Thomas, HOXHA, Endrit, HABERT, Guillaume, SATOLA, Daniel, TRUGER, Barbara, TOZAN, Buket, KUITTINEN, Matti, ALAUX, Nicolas, ALLACKER, Karen, & PASSER, Alexader. (2023). A Global Database on Whole Life Carbon, Energy and Material Intensity of Buildings (CarbEnMats-Buildings) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8378939
- Dataset: Martin Röck. (2023). mroeck/carbenmats-buildings: Pre-release (0.1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8363895