Abstract
With the increasing concerns about building environmental impacts, building information modelling (BIM) has been used to perform different kinds of sustainability analysis. Among the most popular are the life cycle assessment (LCA) and building sustainability assessment (BSA). However, the integration of BIM-based LCA in BSA methods has not been adequately explored yet. This study addresses the relation between LCA and BSA within the BIM context for the Portuguese context. By performing an LCA for a Portuguese case study, a set of sustainability criteria from SBTool were simultaneous assessed during the process. The possibility of integrating BIM-based LCA into BSA methods can include more life cycle stages in the sustainability assessment and allow for normalising and producing more comparable results. BIM automates and connects different stages of the design process and provides information for multi-disciplinary data storage. However, there are still some constraints, such as different BSA/LCA databases and the necessity to manually introduce the embodied life cycle impacts of building materials. The scope of the BSA analysis can be expanded by integrating a complete LCA and be fostered by the support of BIM, effectively improving building sustainability according to local standards.
Highlights
The construction sector is highly accountable for several impacts on the environment [1,2]
The emergence of building information modelling (BIM) in the construction industry has raised the awareness of researchers to optimise design procedures, allowing for time and resources saving while producing high-performance buildings
The interaction between life cycle assessment (LCA), building sustainability assessment (BSA) and BIM can be extremely valuable for a proper interpretation of data, to provide a complete sustainability analysis and to avoid re-work
Summary
The construction sector is highly accountable for several impacts on the environment [1,2]. Up to date, this sector is responsible for 40% of the EU energy demand, 36% of carbon emissions and 50% of raw material consumption [3]. Most of the building’s life cycle impacts are a consequence of decisions made in the early design stages, making it extremely important to carefully select materials with low embodied impacts [5]. Researchers have already recognised the importance of early design stages to reduce buildings’ life cycle environmental impacts and improve building sustainability [2,5,6]. It is essential to act in such project stages to effectively reduce building environmental impacts
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