Welcome to the public github repo for the app. This is a variation of our internal app that does not have The Footprint Company's Green Book Database. Reason being is that it require a license to use it.
The Embodied Carbon App is built to help architects and designers make informed in order to design a more sustainable building. It is obvious to us that timber is far less carbon intense than concrete and steel. However, when it comes to actual buildings where mixtures of Material are necessary for structural stability, the answer is less obvious. We should all strive to minimise our design's embodied carbon, but not compromise structural stability and design excellence.
The App can help identify which material is carbon intense and check if there are alternatives less carbon intense to the later. It can also help identify what floor is causing the issue if a redesign or alteration is required. This app free and open source for anyone. At Fitzpatrick and Partners, we believe this is the way to help our industry move forward and achieve a better and sustainable tomorrow.
This tool aims to achieve a number of things;
- Grow the general knowledge of Embodied Carbon within the architectural community.
- Compare early stage design options for the embodied carbon of different structural solutions.
- Cause individual users to ask further questions about where the carbon is and what to do about reducing it.
- Help to build an industry wide conversation on how to build better now!
You will notice once you extract data from this tool that the two data bases give markedly different data. In light of the above aims the differences between the two data sets are less important than if we were seeking to benchmark or contrast numbers from one to the other. (this is not an aim of this tool). Below we give some pointers as to why and where to from here;
Developed by researchers at The University of Melbourne Published in 2019 The EPIC database uses a Hybrid method to arrive at an EPiC coefficient to define the kgCO2e/m2 of a given material; This Hybrid seeks to capture both bottom up process input and output data together with macro-economic impacts by sector.
Originally published in 2005 and last updated in Nov 2019 Developed by researchers at the University of Bath in the UK The data in the ICE database is A1-A3 Cradle to Gate and is based on EN15804 data which harmonises the structure of EPD’s for all construction products.
Both data sets are generic in nature (they use aggregate data from multiple sources to generate an average) and as such cannot represent accurately the final numbers for a given project in a given location at a given point in time. In the upfront stages of developing a design our view is that due to the above there is no single source of truth, as early in the project so much of the buildings specific supply chain is unknown. Later on in the design development and procurement phases of a project, individual EPD’s based on internationally agreed standards such as ISO or EN standards can be used to build out a much more robust embodied carbon number, based on actuals specific to a given project.
The industry has many voices dedicated to the discussion of the pro’s and cons of each methodology including industry groups such as BIPC, ALCAS, GBCA, RICS and MECLA to name a few. A local data set of generic data based on globally accepted methods such as EN 15804 or ISO 21930 standards would be ideal and we understand may be in the works. However this dataset doesn’t currently exist in Australia to the best of our knowledge. (If you know otherwise we would love to hear from you).
Therefore in the absence of this current Australian data set we are showing both ICE and EPiC outputs in this tool. We note that the methodology in ICE conforms to EN 15804 where EPiC has taken a different approach. We hope that the above gives you some insight into our methodology and thought process to date.
We would recommend;
- Check out the datasets and backgrounds to both the ICE Database and EPiC and pick through their methodologies,
- Form your own view of the pros and cons,
- Contrast their numbers for specific products with EPD’s for those products from manufacturers,
- If you cannot find data from your preferred manufacturer ask them why not,
- Take part in industry discussions with NABERS or MELCA or others,
- Question everything.
We have put together this free tool from open sourced information utilising our best endeavours. The data will show a cross comparison of volumetric data from your model against the two named data sets F+P take no responsibility for the accuracy of the data outputs and in fact draw your attention to the generic nature of the data. The data should be relied on only for the purposes noted above.
Create a copy of any of the branch. Production branch tends to be more uptodate as that's the branch I'm
The App primarily uses schedules from your BIM program of choise. The files can either be a XLSX, XLS or CSV. Schedules should also look like the table below.
| Structure Schedule | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level | Layer | Volume | Material | Mass |
| Ground | COLUMN4 - OPTION 4 | 1234 | Timber | 1234 |
| Ground | WALLS4 - OPTION 4 | 1234 | concrete | 1234 |
| Ground | BEAM4 - OPTION 4 | 1234 | Timber | 1234 |
There are a few gotchas with the schedule. first of all there's a header cell that contains "Structure Schedule" on the top. Archicad will always schedule out a header row even if you specified not to. So the app will Automatically remove it, but if it's not there then it will remove the column names.
This leads in to the next gotcha. The Column names are all case sensitive and need to be those names (Level, Layer, Volume, Material, Mass). If not then the app will not work.
Now that's explained let's explain what each of those column mean.
Level, stands for floor level of that element. in ArchiCAD level would be "Home Story Name".
As for Layer, this is the layer which the element is on, in your BIM program. Our naming conventions maybe different but the App will look for certain keyworks in that layer name. These keywords that it looks for are words like beam, column, slab, wall, stair, conc, concrete, timber and steel. The primary purpose of this column is to distinguish what these elements are and it does not need to be case sensitive. It also picks up materials just because sometimes people leave the materials out during sketch design or picks a "sketch white" material.
Volume is the net volume of the element.
Mass is the mass of the element. To set this you can set up the mass through density of the material in the attribute manager in ArchiCAD. The densities of materials could be found in the EPiC's database pdf
- Create Error Handling that notify users of errors in the database. check for null values, wrong column names, Missing Columns
- In App editing of the uploaded excel
- Material List disappears whenever there isn't a material.
| Isues | Description |
|---|---|
| Cleaning data | Create modal/drawer to setup the excel upload. a ui that tells which column names are which. |
| error logs | have a way to report error better. some way to pop up or download raised errors. |
Here are the most common resources used to build the app. However, You can join the community and chat down at the discord server.
Join and Chat with use in discord
| Titles | Links |
|---|---|
| FP ECA | Click Me |
| EPiC Database | Click Me |
| ICE Database | Click Me |
| LETI | Click Me |
| Architects Declare AU | Click Me |