Extending the ILCD Format to Support Environmental Product

EnviroInfo 2013: Environmental Informatics and Renewable Energies
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
Extending the ILCD Format to Support Environmental Product
Declarations of Construction Products
Oliver Kusche1, Clemens Düpmeier1, Anna Braune2, Tanja Brockmann3, Stephan Rössig3
Abstract
The German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) is publishing a database of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for construction materials and components, the
ÖKOBAU.DAT. The data format is based on the European Commission’s International Reference Life Cycle Data
System (ILCD) data format, which has been extended to fit the specific needs of this application.
With the new EN 15804 standard for Environmental Product Declarations for construction products, the
ÖKOBAU.DAT as well as the underlying data format needed to be revised to comply with the new standard. In order to make it easier for software tool developers to adapt tools to the EPD data format, it is desired to make the EPD
format as much as possible compatible with the ILCD format. In this paper, it is bescribed how the ILCD data format
can be used with only a few minor additions to describe Environmental Product Declarations for construction products according to EN 15804.
1.
Introduction
Type III Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for building products according to ISO 14025 and EN
15804 provide basic data about building products for building certification systems, such as the certification system of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) or the Assessment System for Sustainable Buildings for Federal Buildings (BNB) of the German Federal Ministry for Transport, Building and
Urban Development (BMVBS).
BNB is part of the National Sustainability Strategy. With the binding implementation of BNB to new
constructions of office and administrative buildings, Germany blazes a trail for Sustainable Building in
Europe. It is one of the few countries where the state requires a binding sustainability assessment for its
federal construction projects. Most European Countries use such certification systems only on a voluntarily basis, if at all.
That consideration of sustainability aspects in Europe and for building products are currently gaining in
importance is borne out, among other things, by the European Building Product Directive, where, for the
first time, the topic of sustainability is addressed and formulated directly in connection with building
products as part of the essential and basic requirement 7 “Sustainable use of natural resources”.
Within the German Certification schemes for Sustainable Building, BNB as well as DGNB, building
products are not assessed as individual products, but looked at within the context of the entire building.
Particular with respect to Ecological Quality building materials form an essential part of the overall assessment. Effects on the global environment are assessed by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
The Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), a research institution under the portfolio of the BMVBS, has initiated and is maintaining the ÖKOBAU.DAT
1
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Applied Computer Science, Karlsruhe, Germany
PE INTERNATIONAL AG, Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany
3
Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), Berlin, Germany
2
- a database of life cycle assessment (LCA) data sets for generic and specific construction materials and
components. The ÖKOBAU.DAT is publicly accessible and available for download free of charge at the
ministry’s Sustainable Building web portal (www.nachhaltigesbauen.de). It contains both generic LCA datasets and EPD data sets for specific building products, provided for example by the Institute Construction
and Environment (IBU) e.V. on behalf of many construction material manufacturers. Using the generic
data sets allows sustainability studies of buildings already in early planning stages when architects or
planners do not yet work with product specific but with generic building products information.
Because the mathematical part of these datasets is based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the calculation of the numeric part of an EPD or generic LCA dataset is performed by using an LCA tool, such as the
GaBi Software from PE INTERNATIONAL. When the first version of the ÖKOBAU.DAT was provided
by PE INTERNATIONAL for the BBSR a few years ago, there was neither a commonly accepted standard defining the specific calculation rules for EPDs nor a technical data format available to store the LCA
results calculated by GaBi outside the tool itself. Thus, a new data format for LCA datasets had to be created. To benefit from existing structures, the data format used for the first versions of the ÖKOBAU.DAT
before the redesign described in this paper is an early adaption of the European Commission’s ILCD format for LCA processes, which is already widely implemented in software tools.
As the ÖKOBAU.DAT is a well-known and important tool within the German Certification systems but
also for LCA on building level in general, the BBSR/BMVBS wants to offer a user-friendly tool which also meets current European standardization processes. Hence, the BBSR initiated the project which is described in the paper and carried out by KIT.
With the new EN 15804 standard and a new ILCD format version in place, which has native support for
the new LCIA method data sets standardized by the EU, it became necessary to adjust the EPD data exchange format in order to provide the data to the users according to the new standards. While the first iteration of the EPD data format has been tailored to suit the specific needs of the ÖKOBAU.DAT project, it
is also desirable to (re-)design it in a way to unify the different notions of EPDs and LCA datasets in
ÖKOBAU.DAT and enable and encourage a more widespread use. These were the main objectives of the
redesign which is discussed in more details in the following chapters.
2.
Basic Concepts of EPDs and EN 15804 Requirements
As part of its ISO 14000 series of environmental standards, the International Standards Organisation (ISO)
has set up a collection of standards on environmental labeling: The ISO 14020 family. This group of
standards covers three types of labeling schemes:
• Type I label: a multi-attribute label developed by a third party and defined in ISO 14021;
• Type II label: a single-attribute label developed by the producer and defined in ISO 14022;
• Type III label: an eco-label based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and defined in ISO/TR 14025
The type III labels are also called “Environmental Product Declarations” (EPD). One outcome of the
European standardization activities on sustainability of construction works, covered under the CEN TC
350 work, is a standard on EPDs for building products. This standard is called “EN 15804 Environmental
Product Declarations”. Core rules for the product category of construction products” and was published in
2012. It corresponds on the one hand side to the embracing standard “EN 15643-1 Sustainability assessment of buildings. General framework”, published in 2010. The EN 15804 as “product level standard” also corresponds to a standard on building level “EN 15978 Building Level Calculation Methods”, published in 2011. Both, the building level standard and the product level standard, use the same list of environmental indicators and therefore allow the calculation of building level environmental performance indicators based on EPDs.
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
Although ISO 14025 consistent EPD programs exist since many years, the rules how to set up the environmental models of the life cycle of products (e.g. what to include, what to neglect) and how to calculate
environmental life cycle indicators were not comparable amongst EPD programs. To introduce more rigorous rules for the building sector, the EN 15804 was developed. Today, all EPD program holder either
already implemented the new standard into their specific programs or work on implementing it accordingly. The German IBU scheme from the Institute for Construction and Environment (IBU) e.V. was the first
to introduce the new standard in their EPD program rules.
2.1 Requirements set by EN 15804
2.1.1 Life Cycle Modules according to EN 15804
EN 15804 introduced a modular approach, defining the different parts of the product life cycle. It starts at
the product stage, including raw material supply, transport and manufacturing (cradle to gate). Secondly,
the construction process stage follows. As third stage, covering the modules B1 to B7 all use stage impacts
are covered, including use of products, maintenance, repair, replacement, refurbishment and operational
energy and water use. The end-of-life stage (modules C1 to C4) covers de-construction, transport to EoL,
waste processing and waste disposal processes. As an additional information module, benefits and loads
beyond the system boundaries from reuse, recovery or recycling are summed up in module D (see Figure
1).
Figure 1: Life Cycle Modules according to EN 15804
In EPDs, only the first three modules are mandatory. All other modules are voluntary and don’t have to be
communicated in form of environmental indicators.
2.1.2 Environmental indicators according to EN 15804
The environmental indicators within EPDs cover three groups:
Group 1: Parameters describing environmental impacts:
- Global warming potential (GWP)
- Depletion potential of the stratospheric ozone layer (ODP)
- Acidification potential of land and water (AP)
- Eutrophication potential (EP)
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
-
Formation potential of tropospheric ozone photochemical oxidants (POCP)
Abiotic depletion potential for non fossil resources (ADP elements)
Abiotic depletion potential for fossil resources (ADP fossil fuels)
Group 2: Parameters describing resource use:
- Input of renewable primary energy (energy resources) excluding feedstock
- Input of renewable feedstock*
- Total input of renewable primary energy (resources and feedstock)
- Input of non renewable primary energy (energy resources), excluding feedstock
- Input of non renewable feedstock*
- Total input of non renewable primary energy (resources and feedstock)
Group 3: Other environmental information describing waste categories and output flows:
- Input of secondary material
- Input of renewable secondary fuels
- Input of non renewable secondary fuels
- Input of net fresh water
- Hazardous waste disposed
- Non hazardous waste disposed
- Radioactive waste disposed
- Components for re-use*
- Materials for recycling*
- Materials for energy recovery*
- Exported energy*
These 24 parameters have to be communicated in an EPD. Most are derived from LCA calculation, some
are derived as product system properties and (currently) not based on LCA (marked with an *).
2.2 The ILCD Format
The ILCD data format (European Commission 2011a) has been specified by the European Commission
and implemented at KIT. As an object oriented data format, is has been designed to explicitly allow publishing and linking data over the Internet. The format allows for modelling entities like LCI processes,
flows, flow properties, unit groups, sources and contacts. In the course of the original implementation, extension mechanisms were already forseen in order to allow an adaptation to other applications.
In the initial implementation of the EPD format, these extension mechanisms have been used to extend
the ILCD format’s process dataset to carry additional information in order to model an EPD dataset.
3.
A New EPD Data Exchange Format Based on the ILCD Format
In the advent of the EN 15804 standard, the EPD data format employed by the ÖKOBAU.DAT had to be
revised in order to comply with the new standard. As in the meantime with the 1.1 format release the
ILCD format’s process dataset had gained an additional section to carry LCIA results, it is no longer necessary to model LCI and LCIA indicators by means of an own extension, but rather beneficial to use the
ILCD process dataset’s native structures instead. The advantange of this approach is that existing software
tools with built-in support for the ILCD format can be easily enabled to support the new EPD dataset as
well, with only minor changes to their internal information structures.
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
3.1 Concepts inherited from the ILCD format
The ILCD process dataset forsees many metadata documentation fields that also apply to an EPD. The exchanges and LCIA results section are then used to model LCI and LCIA indicators, respectively. To identify the reference product described by the dataset, the ILCD-native „quantitative reference“ mechanism is
used by pointing to the exchange containing the reference to the reference flow dataset.
As the category hierarchy used by the ÖKOBAU.DAT differs from the one used by IBU and the GaBi
software uses yet another one, EPD datasets need to be categorized in different coexistent and independent
category hierarchies in order to enable users to easily find a dataset by browsing their preferred category
system. The ILCD format natively supports the declaration of an arbitrary number of category systems in
any type of dataset, thus providing a standard solution for this requirement.
In addition to carrying information about any reviews that a dataset has undergone, EPD datasets are
differentiated by the type of verification and standards that they comply with. To address this, the ILCD
format’s concept of declaring compliance systems can be used.
An ILCD process dataset can specify an arbitrary number of compliance systems (which are modelled
as source datasets in the format) it qualifies for. Each of these five types is modelled as a separate compliance system and EPD instance datasets merely need to declare a reference to the corresponding compliance system.
3.2 Extending the ILCD format
3.2.1 Life cycle stages
As outlined in section 2.1.1, EPDs in compliance with EN 15804 include LCI and LCIA indicators for all
lifecycle stages of a product. Unlike in the first iteration of the EPD format, where for each stage a separate dataset would be generated, the reengineered format now combines the data for all stages into a single
dataset. This results in reduced metadata redundancy and simplified handling of datasets, as for each
product there needs to be only one dataset.
Since the declaration of indicator data for multiple separate lifecycle phases is not natively supported in
the ILCD format, indicator declarations in the dataset are supplemented by an extension attribute indicating the respective stage.
3.2.2 Generic vs. vendor specific datasets
According to the European Commission’s ILCD Handbook (European Commission 2011b), a dataset can
be of different types, based on how the data for modelling has been collected:
- generic datasets, based on technical knowledge, literature etc. (generic dataset)
- representative datasets by associations or several vendors (representative dataset)
- average datasets by associations or several vendors (average dataset)
- vendor specific datasets (specific dataset).
While the ILCD format does not offer native support for declaring this information, for EPDs it is desirable to include it in the metadata section. Thus, a corresponding declaration of this type is added to the
EPD data format.
Furthermore, to enable a distinction between data which represents a product specific for a single vendor versus data representing the product in a generic way, an additional flag is introduced, marking a dataset as representing either a generic or a vendor-specific product, along with optional additional metadata
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
fields that allow linking the contact dataset of the vendor and source datasets for attaching references to
product catalogs and/or data sheets.
3.2.3 Material properties
From a practioner’s perspective who uses EPD data in a modelling tool to assess for example an entire
building or parts of it, another information that is desirable to have is detailed information about certain
physical properties of the material such as the raw density. This is especially important in cases where the
functional unit of the EPD dataset is declared in a unit of mass (measured in kg), but the way the product
is actually used does not allow a quantification in that unit at the planning stage, as the use of the product
is measured in another quantity, like for instance area (measured in m2). For example, an EPD for a mineral wool product is measured in kg, while in the application, the product is applied to an area that needs to
be covered, with area in m2 being the quantity used for planning. In such a case, the density of the material
is required to perform a conversion between the two quantities.
So far, information about the raw density of a material has been – if at all – provided within some freetext
documentation field in the metadata of the dataset, making it inaccessible to software tools to use it for automatic conversion. However, in order to enable modelling tools to offer end users a user friendly way to
make this conversion automatically as needed, this type of information needs to be available in machinereadable form. With MatML [], a general-purpose XML description language for material properties that
is already existing and suitable for this purpose, MatML markup can be embedded in the product flow dataset using the ILCD format’s native extension mechanism, as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2: Describing material properties by embedding MatML markup
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
3.3 Modelling product hierarchies
The reference product for an EPD dataset is declared by referencing the corresponding flow dataset representing the product. This relationship is of importance, because this way, it is possible to relate for example between process datasets that are based on data from different years, as they all point to the same
product. This principle is shown in figure 3.
Figure 3: Relation of processes by product
With the differentiation between generic and specific products, an additional relationship is necessary, because for a dataset representing a specific product, it is necessary to know which corresponding generic
product it is linked to, as illustrated in the example in figure 4. Such a reference is not forseen natively in
the ILCD format and therefore also added as an extension.
Figure 4: Modelling product hierarchies
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5
In an application such as the ÖKOBAU.DAT, employing these two relationships can make it a lot easier
for end users and administrators to find datasets and compare them. For example, the user can rather
browse or search the database for a product, and then see a list of available EPD datasets for that product.
If more specific or more generic products exist for the chosen product, this can be displayed by the application an this way the user is enabled to discover other relevant EPDs that may even be more suitable.
4.
Summary and Outlook
Looking at the requirements set by EN 15804 as well as considering the practical experience in working
with the existing EPD data format, a few issues have been identified that need to be addressed in a revision of the EPD data format. With the process dataset of the ILCD format version 1.1 introducing a section for documenting LCIA results, far more native constructs of the ILCD format can be employed to
model EPD data. As a result, it is no longer necessary to extend the format with additional complex information structures beyond those of the native format, paving the way for a possible later inclusion in the
native ILCD format.
Furthermore, a new relationship between flow datasets is introduced that allows to model products that
are a specification or generalization of other products, allowing a more flexible modelling of data in the
ÖKOBAU.DAT in order to make it easier for users and administrators to find and handle data that relates
to the same (or more specific/generic) product(s).
With the new EPD format being supported by the technical platform of the ÖKOBAU.DAT which is
based on the soda4LCA database software (KIT 2011), other software tools, such as tools for modelling
buildings, can be easily enabled to perform on-line search and discovery of EPD datasets in the
ÖKOBAU.DAT database. In addition, LCA modelling tools can be easily adapted to support the new format, allowing the generation of EPD datasets from LCA models.
Bibliography
ISO 15804 Standard. Online at http://constructionlca.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/centc-350-and-en-15804/
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT): soda4LCA Open Source Project (2011):
http://www.iai.fzk.de/soda4LCA/
MatML Material Modelling Language: http://www.matml.org/
European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC) - Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) - Institute for Applied Computer Science (2011): International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) data format and editor. (Accessible via
http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu)
European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC) - Institute for Environment and Sustainability:
(2011): International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook. Series of guidance documents for good practice in Life Cycle Assessment. First edition 2010 - 2011. Luxembourg. Publications Office of the European Union; 2010 and 2011. (Accessible via http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu)
Copyright 2013 Shaker Verlag, Aachen, ISBN: 978-3-8440-1676-5