Research on Carbon Footprint Accounting in the Materialization Stage of Prefabricated Housing Based on DEMATEL-ISM-MICMAC

Abstract

This work employs the carbon emission factor method to offer real-world instances for carbon footprint accounting, allowing for a thorough analysis of the carbon footprint and important influencing elements throughout the materialization stage of prefabricated housing. To identify the 18 important influencing factors that need to be examined from the five stages of building material production, conveyance of building materials, component manufacturing, component transportation, and building, this paper applies the DEMATEL-ISM-MICMAC (Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory–Interpretive Structure Modeling–Cross-Influence Matrix Multiplication) model based on data quantification. Following the findings, the case project’s physical phase generated a carbon footprint of approximately 4.68 × 106 kg CO2. The building materials’ production and processing phase contributed the highest carbon footprint of the entire physical phase, totaling 4,005,935.99 kg CO2, or 88.24% of the total carbon footprint. To determine the centrality and causality of the influencing factors, four major influencing factors—energy consumption of raw materials (S4), construction planning and organization (S15), transportation energy type (S6), and waste disposal (S2)—were identified using the DEMATEL approach. The influencing factor system hierarchy was divided into six levels using the ISM technique. Level L6, which comprises one influencing factor for organizing and planning, is construction planning and organization (S15). Utilizing the MICMAC technique, it was possible to identify the energy consumption of raw materials (S4) as the primary cause of the materialization phase of built dwellings’ carbon footprint. The building material production phases have the largest influence on carbon footprints, according to both case accounting and modeling research. The study’s findings can offer some conceptual guidance for the creation of low-carbon emission reduction schemes.