Sustainable building materials assessment and selection using system dynamics

Abstract

Implementing sustainability can enhance quality of our life and thus granting us a healthy life and promote economic, social, and environmental circumstances. The appropriate use of building materials helps in reducing negative environmental impact and life-cycle cost of buildings. This paper proposes a set of parameters that affects selecting sustainable building materials. These parameters are derived from rating systems, previous studies and experts' opinion. Then, a questionnaire survey is prepared to solicit the opinion of construction practitioners on the importance of these parameters. Accordingly, buildings materials are evaluated according to the amount of waste, the quantity of waste delivered to landfill, the amount of recyclable waste, life-cycle cost, and health and safety index. Because of the complex interrelations among these parameters, a system dynamics model is created to simulate these interactions to enable evaluating building materials. Then, the Analytical Hierarch Process (AHP) is used to select the most sustainable building material depending on the evaluation parameters. The main benefit of the developed model is its ability to evaluate building materials based on the identified parameters, along their life cycle and then selecting the most appropriate one. A case study to appreciate the performance of common building materials like wood, concrete and steel is presented to prove the main features of the suggested model. The simulation results show that concrete is healthier and safer than wood and steel. However, steel has the highest life cycle cost with the lowest amount of waste on landfill because of its high recyclable rate. This development will help decision-makers to select suitable building materials for construction projects.