Critical perspectives on life cycle building performance assessment tool reviews

Abstract

Despite the environmental, social, and economic benefits of integrating quantitative analysis in early architectural design stages, tools developed for this purpose see little use in practice. This meta-review provides an overview of eighty-seven tool reviews in the field of life cycle building performance assessment to identify best practices and remaining gaps. It is found that most previous reviews emphasise technological advancement rather than tool integration in practice, by failing to apply the perspective of tool users in design processes. It is further found that the reviews mostly lack consistent methodologies. To bridge these gaps, it is proposed that future tool evaluation studies define a clear target user and investigate tools based on how they perform in real-world design processes. A tool characterisation framework based on the approaches in previous reviews is proposed to facilitate such investigations.