Visualising carbon in the design and delivery of buildings: a review of the evidence

Reducing carbon emissions has become a goal for international climate change and decarbonisation policy initiatives, particularly in the built environment. Setting and addressing these goals and accounting for how targets are being met poses a major challenge for professionals in the UK and internationally. Industry working groups, think-tanks and newly formed organisations are developing new guidance on techniques, tools and approaches. This paper reviews evidence within academic journal articles of visualisation practices associated with carbon reduction in the design and delivery of buildings. The review uses a narrative method to review academic literature published in the last 5 years. Findings show visualization tools can be categorised as supporting the refinement of design solutions with regards to carbon performance, by aiding the understanding of carbon contributions of different building elements, decision making, benchmarking and enhancing interactions with carbon related data. The implications of the review are twofold. First, the evidence collated enables a new understanding of the implications of different ways of conceptualising and visualising carbon on the design and delivery process, by categorising the functions of visuals and their prevalence within the literature. Second there are implications for future research on carbon reduction in the built environment and associated domains.