Predicting buildings life cycle sustainability behaviour using system dynamics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many interventions were introduced using holistic concepts to scale building conformity with sustainability concepts, such as rating systems. Most rating systems efficiently tackled scoring each environmental impact solely at an instance of the building life cycle. However, interaction of different sustainability parameters over complete building life cycle is barely considered. This research presents an initial attempt towards using the behaviour of sustainability parameters over time as a tool for measuring and evaluating building sustainability. This work focuses on studying the interactions between sustainability parameters throughout building life cycle using system dynamics concept. The study's framework includes three main phases: 1) parameters selection, 2) modelling building life sustainability, and 3) policies evaluation. The study introduces Building Sustainability Level (BSL) as a key parameter for evaluation together with some additional Prevailing Parameters (PPs) such as water consumption. BSL provides good representation of expected building sustainability performance, which showed slight unstable behaviour due to initial adoption of sustainability concepts through early years followed by a dramatic growth then a rational rise through the rest of the building life. Moreover, behaviours associated with PPs indicated that most preservation actions impose steady impact through the building life with less sensitivity to change in its magnitude. The study indicates that sustainability parameters behaviours provide good grounds for measuring sustainability, mainly when giving special attention to parameters interaction rather than individual influence. In addition, the tool developed is capable of providing an indication for building future performance and investigating different interference scenarios.