Purpose

A comprehensive sustainable research requires investigation on all the relevant environmental, financial and social impacts. The objective of this research is to evaluate the sustainability performance of different flooring systems using a multi-criteria method. Included flooring systems are ceramic tile, laminate, concrete and wood, and criteria consist of carbon dioxide emission, ozone layer depletion, cost and social impacts.

Methods

The method of this study entails four stages. In the first stage, the life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted to rank the flooring systems based on carbon dioxide emission (CO₂) and ozone layer depletion (OLD). The second stage entails the life cycle cost assessment (LCCA) which focuses on alternatives based on their related cost. The LCA and LCCA cover the four phases of production and construction, transportation, maintenance and end of life. In the third stage, the social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is performed involving four main social indicators namely workers, local community, society and consumers. The final stage entails the implementation of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to evaluate the different options resulting from the LCA, LCCA and SLCA to propose the most sustainable flooring system by taking into consideration the combination of all the stated criteria.

Results and discussion

The result of the LCA indicates that wood flooring is the least environmental impact per functional unit as it causes fewer carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions (17%) than the second least environmental impact per functional unit (laminated flooring). However, the result of the LCCA suggests that concrete flooring is the lowest costing system, i.e. 30% less than the second best option (wood flooring). On the other hand, the SLCA result indicates that laminated flooring is the least negative social impact with a 28% better score than concrete flooring. The results of the MCDM show that wood is the most sustainable floor system with a utility degree of 100%, higher than laminated flooring at 78%. However, in equal weighting scenario, laminated flooring is shown to be the best choice.

Conclusions

The presented approach in this research has been successfully applied on a case study. It provides valuable insight on the assessment of flooring systems so as to assist decision-makers and architects in prioritising and selecting the most sustainable flooring systems to be used in residential buildings in Malaysia. This methodology can be applied in other countries with a similar climate and cultural preferences.

中文翻译：

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在替代地板系统上应用三项主要指标评估：生命周期研究

目的

全面的可持续研究需要对所有相关的环境，财务和社会影响进行调查。这项研究的目的是使用多准则方法评估不同地板系统的可持续性表现。包括的地板系统是瓷砖，层压板，混凝土和木材，标准包括二氧化碳排放量，臭氧层消耗，成本和社会影响。

方法

这项研究的方法分为四个阶段。在第一阶段，进行生命周期评估（LCA），以根据二氧化碳排放量（CO ₂）和臭氧层耗竭（旧）。第二阶段涉及生命周期成本评估（LCCA），该评估重点是基于替代产品的相关成本。LCA和LCCA涵盖了生产和建设，运输，维护和使用寿命终止的四个阶段。在第三阶段，进行了社会生命周期评估（SLCA），涉及四个主要社会指标，即工人，当地社区，社会和消费者。最后阶段需要实施多标准决策（MCDM）方法，以评估LCA，LCCA和SLCA产生的不同选项，从而通过考虑所有所述标准的组合来提出最可持续的地板体系。

结果与讨论

LCA的结果表明，木地板是每个功能单元对环境的影响最小，因为它引起的二氧化碳（CO ₂）排放量要比每个功能单元对第二环境影响最小（层压地板）要少。但是，LCCA的结果表明，混凝土地板是成本最低的系统，即比第二最佳选择（木地板）低30％。另一方面，SLCA结果表明，层压地板对社会的负面影响最小，得分比混凝土地板好28％。MCDM的结果表明，木材是最可持续的地板系统，实用度为100％，高于层压地板的78％。但是，在权重相等的情况下，多层地板被证明是最佳选择。

结论

本研究中提出的方法已成功应用于案例研究。它提供了有关地板系统评估的宝贵见解，以帮助决策者和建筑师优先考虑和选择将在马来西亚的住宅建筑中使用的最可持续的地板系统。该方法可以在具有类似气候和文化偏爱的其他国家/地区使用。