Benchmarking of the health performance of residential buildings for a combined life cycle assessment, Life Cycle Costing and Health Impact Assessment tool for public housing in Hong Kong

Abstract

In 2005, a consortium comprising of the greenroom, The University of Hong Kong, Davis Langdon a. Seah Management Ltd., and the Business Environment Council completed a combined Life Cycle Assessment/Life Cycle Costing Study of a public rental New Harmony Block for the Hong Kong Housing Authority. The decision making tool measured the financial implications and ten environmental impacts of selecting 110 alternative building materials from the standard specification. The results showed that NHB block generated 1.54 HKE-points/CFA and cost HK Dollar 18040.46/CFA (US Dollar 2313.08/CFA) for the whole 55- year building life-cycle. If Ordinary Portland Cement block partition is changed to gypsum partition, the environmental impacts and the cost would increase by 0.26% and 0.07%, respectively. The decision-making tool assessed environmental and economic sustainability but did not assess the health advantages/disadvantages from alternative materials. To test the possibility of a health assessment, we identified three quantitative health indicators suitable for integration to the LCA and LCC tool: 1) risk-of illness 2) burden of diseases in DALYs and 3) medical cost. This paper defines the health benchmark for existing residential building blocks in HK and it indicates the total cancer burden of residential building blocks with the three health indicators. The paper will demonstrate a three-tier decision-making process for health, environmental and cost performance with the three indicators and the health benchmark of a typical HK residential building. The final tool will assess the environmental, economic and health performance of housing developments.