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A social life cycle assessment model for building construction in Hong Kong

  • SOCIETAL LCA
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a relatively new technique that is under rapid development. To further improve the reliability of S-LCA, more case studies and methodologies are of paramount importance. This study aims to develop a S-LCA model for building construction projects in Hong Kong, namely, the Social-impact Model of Construction (SMoC). In this paper, a social life cycle impact assessment (sLCIA) method is developed and a case study of a building construction project in Hong Kong is performed.

Methods

The development of SMoC is composed of three stages. Stage one strives to establish the sLCIA method which includes the characterization, normalization and weighting. In stage two, a questionnaire survey is conducted to collect the weighting factors and to unveil the social impacts of on-site construction practices. Based on that, the SMoC model which consists of a set of functional worksheets is built. In stage three, a case study following the four-phase structure of S-LCA suggested by the UNEP/SETAC guidelines is conducted.

Results and discussion

Of the selected subcategories, local experts believed that health and safety (worker) is the most important social aspect. The questionnaire survey also suggests that the environmental-friendly on-site construction activities as identified in this research are beneficial to the society in general. However, adoption of precast concrete components can lead to negative impacts on fair salary and local employment, since the precast concrete is normally produced outside Hong Kong. The case study demonstrates that the studied project has positive social impacts in general, while the construction stage performs better than the material stage. The sensitivity analysis indicates that inclusion of environmental-friendly construction practices can significantly improve the social performance of the studied building construction project.

Conclusions

The developed SMoC model and the case study should provide a comprehensive framework of S-LCA for building construction in Hong Kong. Despite being the first attempt of S-LCA in Hong Kong, the results help inform the local industry the social performance of their construction projects from a life cycle perspective.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the participants of the questionnaire survey for their support on this research. This study is financially supported by the Research Grants Council of the HKSAR Government through the General Research Fund (Grant No.: 7160/11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China

    Ya Hong Dong & S. Thomas Ng

Authors
  1. Ya Hong Dong
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  2. S. Thomas Ng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Thomas Ng.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Marzia Traverso

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM 1

A questionnaire survey designed to collect the weighting factors of subcategories and the social impacts of a set of environmental-friendly construction activities (PDF 64 kb)

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Dong, Y.H., Ng, S.T. A social life cycle assessment model for building construction in Hong Kong. Int J Life Cycle Assess 20, 1166–1180 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-015-0908-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-015-0908-5

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