An International Service Life Database: The grid Definition for an Actual Implementation of Factor Methods and Service Life Prediction

Service Life planning is becoming more and more important in the design step when the set of taken choices are influenced by the entire life cycle assessment of a building process: as a consequence, the need for more accurate Service Life data becomes essential, compounded by the necessity of a wider availability and an easier accessibility to this information. Due to the resulting increase in the detail and the complexity of building materials and components data, a tool for its collection, sharing and use becomes indispensable. Moreover, the attention towards the sustainable issue should consider building materials and components performance over time since such life-cycle assessment knowledge cannot be crystallized at their initial behaviour. The choice of the best building components and materials to be adopted in each design process has to consider not only their duration but also their failure rate curve over time: an effective sustainable process is based on an optimised maintenance planning and this is possible only through the knowledge of building components’ durability.Such a tool for building materials and components data collection should provide information about their service life in known reference conditions (Reference Service Life, RSL). Furthermore it could be exploited for Service Life Prediction as well: the aim is to structure this database as a collaborative tool to allow the sharing among all the different stakeholders of the building process but, at the same time, to ease development of further implementations, such as the application of methods for Service Life Estimation. This paper presents the methodological research activity employed to create a factor grids database for RSL data collection and for the application of a proposed enhanced factor method for Service Life Prediction.