Whole building life cycle assessment at the design stage: a BIM-based framework using environmental product declaration

Feng, Haibo; Kassem, Mohamad; Greenwood, David; Doukari, Omar

doi:10.1108/ijbpa-06-2021-0091

Cited by 21 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This includes defining the LCA scope and goals (for example, the life cycle stages to be included, and functional unit used), choosing the source of LCI data, and defining the environmental impact categories included in the assessment. These considerations can significantly influence results [60], and cause a lack of consistency between evaluations, making them difficult to compare [45,53].…”

Section: Lca Inputs and Methodological Variations Between Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Prideaux

Crawford

Allacker

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Buildings and construction are among the leading contributors towards global greenhouse gas emissions, resource demands, waste, and pollution, placing a massive strain on our natural environment. Until recently, mitigation strategies have primarily concentrated on reductions in operational energy, failing to account for embodied effects; those associated with the manufacture of construction goods, construction activities, and end of life considerations. In recent years, there has been an increased recognition of the growing significance of embodied effects, and the opportunity to reduce these during the building design process. However, life cycle assessment (LCA) tools used to quantify environmental flows are often perceived as being too time-consuming or complicated to incorporate into prevalent building design workflows. The aim of this study was to review approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process, including the LCA tools and environmental data used to achieve this. A systematic review was conducted of academic and grey literature. The study identified three main approaches for incorporating LCA into the building design process: simplified LCA, detailed LCA and incremental LCA. Further analysis of these approaches was conducted, based on case studies. General attributes and design considerations were identified, and mapped against the early design, and detailed design stages. A wide variety of LCA approaches were reviewed, responding to various challenges for incorporating LCA into the building design process, with no singular approach able to completely satisfy all requirements. Findings highlight the lack of incremental LCA approaches, and the need for further research to understand how LCA approaches can be better used to improve the embodied environmental performance of buildings during the design process.

show abstract

Section: Lca Inputs and Methodological Variations Between Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Prideaux

Crawford

Allacker

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For this reason alone, it is essential that steps are taken to address the gap. Here, Feng et al (2023) provide a valuable step as they develop a Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment (WBLCA) methodology aimed at reducing the environmental impacts. The work recognises the complexity and significance of the challenge and, noting a lack of research in this area, they offer an integrated BIM approach to evaluate and optimise designs.…”

Section: Life Cycle Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst admirable, the philosophical Circular Economy and Life Cycle Analysis approaches have data limitations that need to be addressed. Here Feng et al (2023) makes progress and offers a Building Information Modelling (BIM) based framework to iteratively and systematically evaluate embedded building and operational carbon of whole buildings. Peukes et al (2023) also effectively uses Life Cycle Assessment, this time applied to gas heating system upgrades and retrofits.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Guest editorial: Building performance and sustainable infrastructure: unsustainable return to practice

Gorse

Booth

Scott

2023

IJBPA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Unsustainable return to practiceThe abrupt decline in global carbon emissions experienced during the pandemic was not sustainable. Overwhelmingly, this is evidenced by the advanced economies' swift return to close to pre-pandemic levels and, of greater concern, the total global use of fossil fuels has rebounded to their highest level in history (IEA, 2021;Jackson et al., 2022). Unfortunately, post-pandemic, the anthropic life threating activities have resumed.Although the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) galvanised a global response with Net Zero pledges, the United Nations implementation data presents a sobering picture (UN, 2022). The impact data report reveals that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is in grave danger (UN, 2022). Many of the sectors in the major economies remain outdated and carbon intensive, with initial commitments not matched by action (Marteau et al., 2021; UN Environment Programme, 2020). The construction industry in this regard, being responsible for 37% of global emissions, carries a considerable share of the burden (Hamilton et al., 2021). A radical transformation is required to decarbonise the sector and buildings (Murtagh et al., 2023). The UK's Net Zero Strategy -"Build Back Greener" (HM Government, 2021), which sets out the polices and proposals for 2050 decarbonisation seeks to address the transition required from the major economic sectors. However, in a recent High Court legal challenge from environmental groups it was held that the Strategy provided insufficient information on how the carbon budgets would be met (Friends of the Earth Ltd., Client Earth, Good Law Project and Janna Wheatly and Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2022). Although early decarbonation of sections of energy supply show progress, other sectors present a sizeable hurdle. This is especially so in the construction sector, which is not maintaining pace towards Net Zero (Hamilton et al., 2021). The Royal Academy of Engineering notes that much more needs to be done (Mitchell et al., 2021). The Academy calls for better design and specification, major developments in construction and reuse of buildings and materials, as well as significant changes to procurement if the sector is to achieve Net Zero by 2050.The research reported in this special issue of the International Journal of Building Pathology and Adaptation, which focusses on building performance and infrastructure, affirms just how wide and varied the challenge is and how critical research is to the solution.Here, even where research is advancing, there are still knowledge gaps.The contributing academic papers clearly identify transformational challenges both with current practice, existing methodologies and measurement tools. Bruce-Konuah et al. (2023) found that all domestic building occupants in their study of heating behaviour manually override their heating system, undermining the use of the thermostat set point. Agyekum et al. (2023) showed that even when buildings were sustainably certified using ...

show abstract

“…A total of 15 papers was published used TOPSIS as the decision-making method in sustainable design in the past 15 years. Sustainable product design is one of the most frequently applied subject area of TOPSIS on sustainable design, mainly work on the improve of the environmental performance of products at the early stage of product design (Feng et al;Niero & Kalbar, 2019;Zhang, Dong, Jin, Li, & Ren, 2020). End-of-life strategy was also a frequently applied subject area for TOPSIS on sustainable design, mainly focus on evaluation on uncertain component end-of-life (EOL) options in the design stage (Ajukumar & Gandhi, 2013;Ma, Kremer, & Ray, 2018;Sabaghi, Mascle, & Baptiste, 2016).…”

Section: Topsismentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods Applied to Achieve Sustainable Design: A Systematic Review

Liu

Zhu

2023

Proc. Des. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sustainability is an issue concerned with social, economic and environmental problems. The primary aim of sustainability is to fulfil the needs of the present society without compromising potential needs of future generations. Product design has a significant impact on sustainability, and a sensible decision-making process that considers trade-offs at early design stage is critical to the success of product design that addresses environmental sustainability issues. This study aims to identify and review the decision-making process for environmentally sustainable design. A comprehensive literature review has been performed to establish the trends over the past two decades. The decision-making process for sustainable design has been summarised, and the frequently-used decision-making methods, such as ANP/AHP, TOPSIS, and BWM, have been identified and discussed. A framework for the selection of Multi-criteria Decision-making (MCDM) methods has been developed to aid researchers to select appropriate MCDM methods in sustainable design. In addition, future research opportunities have also been identified.

show abstract

Whole building life cycle assessment at the design stage: a BIM-based framework using environmental product declaration

Cited by 21 publications

References 49 publications

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process

Guest editorial: Building performance and sustainable infrastructure: unsustainable return to practice

Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods Applied to Achieve Sustainable Design: A Systematic Review

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About