Abstract
The construction industry is one of the most significant consumers of environmental resources worldwide. Faced with the need to produce new buildings, but without further burdening the environment, attempts to improve social, economic, and environmental indicators have turned attention to building construction in recent decades. The objective of this research is to develop a novel framework to assess the most sustainable choice of materials applied to the construction of low-income buildings, according to the three pillars of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL). A BIM-LCSA-FAHP-based model was proposed with the creation of nine different scenarios, where the materials of the structure (precast concrete, cast-in-place concrete, and structural masonry), painting (PVA water-based and acrylic), and roofing (ceramic and fiber cement tiles) varied. The proposed procedure consists of the elaboration of a 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) model, for which the parameters described above were evaluated according to the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA)-TBL-based criteria, divided into ten sub-criteria, that includes: (1) environmental (acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone depletion, smog formation, primary energy, non-renewable energy, and mass total), (2) economic (construction cost) and (3) socio-political issues (community impact). Finally, the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used as a multi-criteria decision-making technique that helps in aggregating and classifying the impacts of each scenario in a sustainability index (SI). Regarding the best option for low-income construction, the results indicated that precast concrete when combined with acrylic paint and fiber cement tiles (scenario 3) proved to be the most advantageous and achieved first place in the sustainability index (SI) developed in this work. This methodology is replicable for different construction typologies and several categories of materials, making it a robust decision-aiding tool for engineers, architects, and decision makers.
Highlights
The main objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive and systemic decisionmaking tool simultaneously based on Building Information Modeling (BIM), Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), and Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM), which uses the best environmental, economic, and social building-material choice when planning a new construction project
A framework was developed to integrate LCSA, MCDM, and BIM, to assess the most sustainable choice of materials applied to the construction of low-income buildings, according to the three pillars of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL)
The proposed methodology was tested for a building for which the construction pattern is one of the most popular in low-income housing projects developed in Brazil
Summary
The construction industry is one of the most significant consumers of environmental resources worldwide [1,2], and one of the biggest industries responsible for giving rise to large amounts of waste [3]. The construction sector uses 30–40% of all-natural resources and primary energy over its lifespan, accounting for 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG). Access to adequate housing is an internationally recognized basic human right that plays an important role in society, providing citizens with dignity and security [7,8]. In an attempt to mitigate this social problem and provide access to housing for the portion of the population traditionally excluded from the conventional real estate market, the Brazilian Federal Government created the program designated “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” (My House, My Life), aimed at simplifying, financing, and encouraging the construction and acquisition of low-cost houses [10,12,13]
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