Quantitative integration of fire risk with life cycle analysis of building: The case of thermal insulation

Abstract

Given the ever-growing importance of environmental sustainability, greater attention has been paid to the energy consumption of buildings. A significant share of such consumption is due to the thermal regulation of buildings’ interior spaces. Thermal insulation is highly effective in reducing these energy needs. Consequently, national policies have been introduced or revised to increase the minimum insulation requirements. Besides, a large share of thermal insulation materials is currently plastic-based. These materials were found to have increased the severity of fire consequences in a few recent major fires. Instead, inorganic fibrous insulation materials, especially those almost incombustible, have a lower impact on fire development but also lower thermal insulation performances. The optimization problem, with fire safety on one side and energy performances on the other, has been the subject of recent research. Nonetheless, due to the numerous uncertainties, such optimization is usually discussed only qualitatively. Conversely, in this work, full probabilistic methods and damage-to-impact conversion are applied to fire risk assessment and found to be a reliable strategy for a quantitative approach. Thus, a quantitative integration of fire risk-based environmental impact of thermal insulation, applied to a general case study, is presented. Damage-to-impact conversion is realized by using embodied carbon values and fire fragility functions. This application also accounts for direct greenhouse gas emissions from combustion. The final results show that fire consequences are comparable with the superior thermal performance effects in the environmental balance between plastic-based and inorganic fibrous insulation materials.