Abstract

Chile begins to incorporate sustainability principles in its State policies at the sector level, which has created a great opportunity for the building sector, by encouraging improvements in the environmental impact on the integrated management of economic and environmental aspects in the life cycle of buildings. This article shows a comparative analysis in economic, social and environmental parameters between the two most common construction solutions proposed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning in Chile: (a) structural wall of radiata pine and (b) reinforced concrete wall. For this analysis, was used a computer tool named ÁBACO-CHILE, which allows the integration of economic, social and environmental criteria from any building projects budget. ÁBACO-CHILE tool was designed to incorporate, on each budget item, an economic cost, a social cost and environmental parameters of contained energy and carbon footprint, using the first Chilean-site specific environmental Database. The results of the analysis show that the economic, social cost and environmental aspects evaluated are much higher on environmental evaluation in the case of the reinforced concrete construction solution, surpassing almost 70 times the values of the structural wall of radiata pine. Considering these results, it is possible to conclude that ABACO-CHILE is a useful tool to identify environmental impacts in the early design stage of any buildings project and also that this analysis allows an advance incorporation of sustainability criteria in buildings projects in Chile.