Standards
The principles and requirements of life cycle assessment (LCA) are defined in the international standards ISO 14040/14044. The European standards EN 15804 and EN 15978 apply to environmental product declarations for construction products and the environmental assessment of buildings.
Data sources
EPD platforms
The LCA datasets in SURAP come from providers of environmental product declarations (EDP) and life cycle assessment data:
SURAP data
Additional environmental data on construction products and construction processes are compiled by SURAP GmbH on the basis of the ISO 14040/14044 and EN 15804 standards.
Useful lives
The sources for the reference service life of building materials are based on:
- Information in EPDs
- BNB useful lives of components
- VDI 2067 Sheet 1 is used for technical building equipment products.
The information has been carefully selected, but may not always reflect the actual conditions of material and product use. The stated service lives should therefore be checked and adjusted if necessary.
Background databases
Background database refers to the inventory databases on which the LCA results of a product or process data set are based. Common background databases are the GaBi and ecoinvent. As ecoinvent and GaBi use different approaches to modeling, it is recommended to use data sets from one of the background databases. The combined use of both background databases should only be used in exceptional cases.
Data types
The LCA datasets in SURAP can be filtered by data type. The following data types are available:
- Specific data: Manufacturer-specific data set (company) for a product or product group.
- Average data: Average data sets from industry associations, several companies or businesses.
- Representative data: Data that is representative of a country/region.
- Template data: Non-specific data sets for certain products that are created on the basis of a "template EPD".
- Generic data: Generic data according to EN 15804 and DIN CEN/TR 15941 - 2010-11 as well as other data not modeled on the basis of industry data (e.g. based on literature, expert knowledge, etc.)
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