Purpose Life cycle assessment can support decisions for improving the environmental performance of construction products. However, the amount of data required for developing life cycle inventories limits the adoption of LCA. This work associates the interpretation of the impact results of construction products at the unit process level with a quantitative definition for the foreground and background system, for guiding primary data collection towards foreground processes that can be affected by decision-makers in the construction sector. Methods A set of construction products commonly used in Brazil is selected, and their cradle-to-gate life cycle inventories are modeled using the ecoinvent database (version 2). Life cycle impact assessment is performed using the ReCiPe Midpoint Hierarchist method. The contribution of each process during the life cycle of construction products for each impact category is quantified. These processes are associated with economic sectors, which are classified as belonging to the foreground or background system from the perspective of the construction industry. Foreground sectors are those controlled or influenced by the construction sector and are defined based on the production share consumed by the construction value chain. The elementary flows defining each impact category are also identified. Results and discussion Foreground processes show significant contributions to most impact results of construction products. Global warming, fine particulate matter formation, ozone formation, acidification, human carcinogenic toxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity are mainly caused by direct emissions and fossil fuel combustion in manufacturing processes. Land occupation for production activities contributes to land use change, while the consumption of fuels, raw materials, and water causes fossil and mineral resource scarcity and water consumption respectively. Freshwater and marine ecotoxicities and human non-carcinogenic toxicity have foreground contributions only for steel and copper products due to emissions from the landfilling of mining tails. Ionizing radiation and stratospheric ozone depletion are mostly driven by background processes. A reduced group of elementary flows covers a big share of the environmental impacts of most construction products. Conclusions The results indicate priorities for life cycle inventory primary data collection of construction products, by focusing on foreground processes and the corresponding elementary flows that cause many of the potential embodied impacts of construction. Increasing the availability of primary data for these processes improves the reliability of LCA-based decisions in the construction sector, especially in countries which still lack local LCI databases.

中文翻译：

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建筑产品生命周期清单的主要数据优先级：关注前台流程

目的 生命周期评估可以支持改善建筑产品环境性能的决策。但是，开发生命周期清单所需的数据量限制了 LCA 的采用。这项工作将在单元过程级别对建筑产品影响结果的解释与前景和背景系统的定量定义相关联，以指导原始数据收集到可能受到建筑部门决策者影响的前景过程。方法 选择巴西常用的一组建筑产品，并使用ecoinvent 数据库（第2 版）对其从摇篮到门的生命周期清单进行建模。使用 ReCiPe Midpoint Hierarchist 方法执行生命周期影响评估。对每个影响类别的建筑产品生命周期中每个过程的贡献进行量化。这些过程与经济部门相关，从建筑行业的角度来看，这些部门被归类为属于前台或后台系统。前景部门是那些受建筑部门控制或影响的部门，是根据建筑价值链消耗的生产份额来定义的。还确定了定义每个影响类别的基本流程。结果和讨论 前景过程对建筑产品的大多数影响结果显示出显着贡献。全球变暖、细颗粒物形成、臭氧形成、酸化、人类致癌毒性、和陆地生态毒性主要由制造过程中的直接排放和化石燃料燃烧引起。生产活动占用土地导致土地利用变化，而燃料、原材料和水的消耗分别导致化石和矿产资源稀缺和水资源消耗。由于采矿尾矿填埋排放，淡水和海洋生态毒性以及人类非致癌毒性仅对钢铁和铜产品具有前景贡献。电离辐射和平流层臭氧消耗主要是由背景过程驱动的。减少的一组基本流量涵盖了大多数建筑产品的大部分环境影响。结论 结果表明建筑产品生命周期清单原始数据收集的优先级，通过关注前景过程和相应的基本流程，这些流程会导致许多潜在的施工影响。增加这些过程的原始数据的可用性提高了建筑部门基于 LCA 决策的可靠性，特别是在仍然缺乏本地 LCI 数据库的国家。