A harmonized method for automatable life cycle sustainability performance assessment and comparison of civil engineering works design concepts

Paper in proceeding, 2020

The life cycle sustainability performance of civil engineering works is increasingly important. The possibility to influence the sustainability of a project design is larger in the conceptual stage than in later stages. Better-informed decisions regarding design choices’ impact on sustainability can be made by comparing conceptual project designs based on an assessment of their life cycle sustainability performance. It is essential that concepts are assessed in a harmonized way and compared impartially. Current standards provide the general framework for the assessment of sustainability performance, but do not give detailed guidance on calculation of sustainability indicators and their aggregation. Since design in automated systems is becoming increasingly common, there is a growing need for machine-readable data and automatable assessment methods. Assessment methods which can be applied using open-access data is important to achieve fair competition. This paper aims to provide a method for life cycle sustainability performance assessment and comparison of civil engineering works design concepts, possible to apply using open-access Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and life cycle assessment (LCA) data. The purpose is to enable fair and automatable sustainability assessments of design concepts, to facilitate impartial comparisons of such assessments as a basis for choosing sustainable designs. A literature review of relevant standards and scientific papers on sustainability assessment of construction and civil engineering works was performed. A harmonized, fair and automatable method for life cycle sustainability assessment and comparison of civil engineering works design concepts, well-suited for optimization purposes, is presented. However, the aim currently limits categories and indicators possible to include. The proposed method includes guidance on the calculation of environmental, social and economic indicators, based on LCA, life cycle costing (LCC) and external costs, and aggregation using normalisation and weighting factors of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). The proposed method allows for an impartial comparison of the sustainability of design concepts, resulting in better-informed decisions.