Assessment System for Sustainable Building (BNB)
The Assessment System for Sustainable Building (Bewertungssystem Nachhaltiges Bauen für Bundesgebäude, BNB) of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building is an integral quantitative assessment method for office, administrative, teaching and laboratory buildings completing the guide to sustainable construction.
The novel integral sustainability approach was conceived by the German federal government as a system for assessment of sustainable buildings in line with the relevant scientific fundamentals and planning principles. The system is characterized by giving equal consideration to the different life cycle stages of buildings while taking into account the ecological, economic and socio-cultural quality as well as the technical and process aspects. Besides, its transparency and objective traceability reflect the current international developments in the area of standardization for sustainable construction.
eLCA software for building life cycle assessment
The online life cycle assessment tool for buildings of the BBSR helps planners, architects and constructors to assess ecological criteria of buildings. With the eLCA software, the environmental effects of buildings can be easily, quickly and BNB-conformably determined and assessed taking into consideration the entire life cycle.
Scope of functions of eLCA
- dynamic screen graphics
- transparent calculation
- comparison of variants
- BNB-compliant results
- graphical evaluation
- life cycle analysis of new buildings and existing buildings
- BNB-compliant link of the material datasets over the life cycle
- import and export interfaces
- online availability
eLCA is provided free of charge in German and English by the BBSR online on www.bauteileditor.de. It always contains the constantly updated ÖKOBAUDAT data.
WECOBIS
For sustainable planning, construction, and operation of buildings, the well-founded assessment and selection of building products is a key issue to be taken into account increasingly by anyone involved in construction. With the context of sustainable construction playing an important role, WECOBIS provides information on the environment and health aspects of important groups of construction products.
The Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building operates WECOBIS together with the Bavarian architectural association Bayerische Architektenkammer, thus ensuring a high degree of neutrality and practical relevance. Business was taken over in 2010 by Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung - BBSR (Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development). Since then, the latter has been operating the WECOBIS office which pools the interests of participants and members and organizes the WECOBIS updates and enhancement. Continuous updates in step with actual practice are ensured via a well-proven editing environment with distributed structures.
