OOPEAA is embarking on a research and development project to create a Life Cycle Visualizer

OOPEAA has just received a grant from the Ministry of Environment, Finland for a research and development project to create a Life Cycle Visualizer. The grant is part of the Growth and Development from Wood Program by the Ministry of Environment, Finland. OOPEAA’s Life Cycle Visualizer is one of the eleven projects to be supported by the grant.

The Life Cycle Visualizer will provide an early assessment tool for evaluating the impact of material choices on the sustainability of a building. The tool makes it possible for designers, clients and all parties involved in the early decision making process of a building project to better comprehend the impact of alternative material and structural choices in a particular location for a particular volume on the sustainability of the project, and to communicate about it in an easily understandable, visual manner.

The intention is not to create a tool for providing a full life cycle analysis. Instead, the goal is to create a web based visualizing tool to be used in the early stages of design prior to having made decisions that at a later stage will make it possible to perform a proper life cycle analysis.

The Life Cycle Visualizer tool is about visualizing and making transparent basic information regarding a building project:

– Embodied energy (measured in CO2 emissions)

– Baseline for operative energy (measured as average energy needed

– The overall life cycle (including the aspect of the recyclability of the material/building at the end of the life cycle of the building)

OOPEAA will carry out the research and development project together with an international team of test users and key collaborators.

The Life Cycle Visualizer project builds on OOPEAA’s earlier experience as a participant in the STED program, a three-year Nordic collaboration project on sustainable transformation and environmental design supported by the Nordic Built grant for Innovation to provide a Nordic innovation platform for developing new design solutions and design processes for construction, renovation and transformation.

For more information on the grant program supported by the Ministry of Environment, Finland can be found in Finnish HERE.

More information on the Life Cycle Visualizer can be found in this PDF.