BTPFlux: a building material flow analysis model to enhance the urban metabolism on French territories

Abstract

Worldwide, the construction sector is the principal consumer of raw resources (50% of the natural resources) and the leading producer of solid waste (2.2 billion tons per year). Because of their quantity and their potential for development, construction wastes constitute a catalyst for establishing strategies and action programs aimed at making the management of resources circular at several territorial scales. Performing these strategies needs a detailed and structured knowledge of flows. In this context, the CSTB has developed a macro-component bottom-up-based model: BTPFlux, that aims to characterize the materiality of the building stock and the associated demolition, and renovation waste flows. A national database with generic information for every building on the metropolitan French territory was used. This database gathers information such as the surface, the typology, or the year of construction of the buildings and is then linked with a specific database characterizing existing construction products. This method provides a detailed characterization of the building material stock available on the French metropolitan territory. So, the environmental impacts, the treatment costs, and the valorisation potentials can be estimated by implementing different management scenarios for each category of waste assessed. The model was already successfully applied to the “Ile de France” region and can be replicated to any other French territory. The results will allow the stakeholders to better understand the materiality of their territory, giving them the possibility of making optimal decisions to implement the reuse and recycling of secondary resources. However, some improvements can still be made in the description levels of macrocomponents or in the description of infrastructures that BTPFlux does not currently model.