Towards a life cycle sustainability assessment method for the quantification and reduction of impacts of buildings life cycle

Abstract

The construction and building sectorsare one of the highestconsumersof resourcesand energy. Literature evidences the potentialities of the design phase towardsthe improvement of environmental, economic and social performance of buildings. Thus, the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) approach is recognized as suitable method. It isbased on the “triple bottom line”principle, to calculate environmental, economic, social impacts produced by buildings during itslife cycle. The present paper aims to present a methodological framework based on anLCSA, used during design stages of buildings and integrated into a building’s design technology such as Building Information Modeling (BIM). A conceptual approach to conduct the data integration and a possible workflow to integrate the LCSA into BIMis proposed. The value of the present approach is the possibility to conductquantitative environmental, economic and social assessment of buildings to guide designers to measure and predict the building’s performance