Summary

Infrastructure projects are imperative to the development of Sri Lanka. It is understood that sustainable infrastructure should focus on prevention of unnecessary consumption of natural resources (especially non-renewable ones) and mitigation of harmful emissions. As such, every project may be evaluated in terms of environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability, where integration and optimal balance. In 2012, Green Building Council was established in Sri Lanka introducing a local GreenSL rating system to enhance the sustainability of the built environment. Recently, UDA introduced the “Green Rating" for proposed projects, promoting and encouraging sustainable development trough construction of environmental friendly buildings. Moreover, from year 2017 all the Government & Semi Government new buildings need to be get “Green Building Certification” by UDA. It’s very clear that the Sri Lankan authorities are taking initiatives to ensure infrastructure sustainability in the country. It takes lot of resources, technical expertise and time to evaluate the infrastructure sustainability. In other countries, such difficulties were overcome to a great extent due to the use of efficient assessment tools such as LCA based models. Absence of such versatile tools that can be applied to local infrastructure is a main drawback for the country’s sustainable growth. As such the proposed model can serve as a versatile tool to evaluate sustainability of local infrastructure projects from design through construction and operation to demolition stage. The applicants seeking green certification will also be hugely benefitted by using the proposed model as it will be very effective for them to claim the necessary green points by showing the quantified evidence given through the model.

Objectives

Aim
Development of a user-friendly model to assess the sustainability of building infrastructure in Sri Lanka using Life Cycle Assessment approach

Objectives
1. To conduct a comprehensive review on the national and international existing models/frameworks and data bases for modelling the sustainability of the building infrastructure
2. To conduct a comprehensive study on upstream and downstream processes (construction, operation, maintenance and demolition) of Sri Lankan building construction sector including collection of any missing data to modify the existing international data basses as and when appropriate.
3. To develop a model to assess life cycle impacts of a building infrastructure.
4. To verify the model performance by doing a case study of a building project.

Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant