Software to reduce environmental footprint of a building over its life cycle
Developed by the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute in collaboration with Morrison Hershfield, the Impact Estimator for Buildings (external link) is a software application that helps building professionals better understand and reduce the environmental footprint of buildings over their entire life cycle.
Users can calculate the environmental impact of more than 1,200 structural and envelope assembly combinations and can make multiple comparisons at once. Region-specific factors like electricity grids, transportation modes and distances, and product manufacturing technologies are automatically applied based on the building’s location. Design teams can change and substitute materials for helpful side-by-side comparisons—and quickly generate reports, graphs, tables, summary measures and bills of materials with just a few clicks.
The software from the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute is available as a downloadable desktop application for Windows systems and as a remote cloud-based service for MACs.