A parametric approach to defining archetypes for an integrated material stocks and flows analysis and life cycle assessment of built stocks

Slavkovic, Katarina [UCL] Stephan, André [UCL] Mulders, Gildas Youri [UCL]

Archetyping is a method for developing representative models of groups of buildings or infrastructure assets that share similar attributes. They typically focus on buildings and often support a single assessment method, such as urban building energy modelling, regardless of other significant flows (e.g. materials). Simplifications in developing archetypes and the inability to represent the distribution of flows across scales of the built environment reduce the precision of a model, which is critical in conducting a robust assessment that yields useful results. This paper aims to present an archetyping approach that supports an integrated life cycle assessment and material flow analysis of stock assets. As such, developed archetypes represent buildings, infrastructure, vegetation and soils. Built assets are defined as nested sets of assemblies, elements and materials. To improve reliability, we couple material compositions with geometrical data through the use of geographic information systems. We present the procedure for defining archetypes, and apply it to a building and transport infrastructure asset. The high resolution of the proposed archetyping approach enables a very high data granularity. This granularity enables a more detailed modelling of different scenarios, as well as dynamic life cycle assessment, and provides a high spatial resolution.