Evaluating the Environmental Impact Potential of Industrialized Construction in Developing Economies

Buildings and construction strongly contribute to the global warming effect. The developing economies and especially Africa expect an exponential urban growth and strong increase in the housing demand. Industrial construction (IC) can deliver the capacity to meet the demand, but its sustainability has not been proven yet. The thesis does a comparative lifecycle assessment (LCA) for the case study cities of Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Cape Town where exterior walls and slabs are analysed. Depending on the level of industrialization, the elements have been divided into the three categories of conventional, partially industrial and industrial construction.
The analysis has shown that the conventional elements mostly have a lower impact on the global warming than the partially industrial, but a higher than the industrial elements. Especially the dematerialization achieved through smarter design strongly decreases the impact. When shifting to IC, the impact due to transportation or manufacturing is increasing, but the total impact is still much lower compared to the conventional or partially industrial elements.
Cutting edge technologies such as the 3D printing of houses first must proof their sustainability and widen their applicability before they are introduced on a larger scale. Developing economies will have to leapfrog over partial industrialization to lower the environmental impact of housebuilding.
The thesis also shows a qualitative material flow analysis approach which is a requirement if the case study cities want to meet the new demand when shifting their construction to IC and want to mitigate possible side effects such as the clear cutting of forests due to a suddenly high demand of crosslaminated timber products.
The outlook includes recommendations for the upscaling of the LCA study and shows how the limitations of the thesis can be overridden.