OpenBIM-based assessment for social cost of carbon through building life cycle

Abstract

Buildings produce many carbon emissions in their life cycle, which leads to global warming, human disease, ecosystem destruction, and food shortages. These harms are translated and revealed into the social cost of carbon (SCC), but assessing the building SCC considering protection objects is still difficult due to the lack of adequate and rapid tools. Therefore, this paper proposes a method based on OpenBIM to calculate the SCC through the building life cycle. This method reflects the cause-effect chains of carbon emissions on human health, ecosystem quality, and social assets under LIME, EPS, and ReCiPe approaches. An original tool, NMBIM, is developed based on this proposed method, which calculates the SCC of a case building by directly importing industry foundation classes (IFC) files. The case results show that the maximum life cycle SCC reaches 5872.4 RMB/m2, which exceeds the construction cost. Although SCC results obtained by different LCIA models vary widely, the ones of human health are the most concerned protection objects. This paper provides an effective method for standardly storing and optimizing SCC at the project design stage, which contributes to construction industry planning, construction company decision-making, and public regulation.