Buildings LCA and digitalization: Designers' toolbox based on a survey
Paper in proceeding, 2022

In a context of digitalization and increasing quality requirements, the building sector is facing an increasing level of complexity regarding its design process. This results in a growing number of involved actors from different domains, a multitude of tasks to be completed and a higher degree of needed expertise. New buildings are also required to reach higher performances in terms of environmental quality. To that regard, the exploitation of the full potential of digital tools can facilitate the integration of environmental aspects in the planning process, limit productivity shortcomings and reduce environmental impacts, which can result from an unaware decision making. Building environmental assessment can be performed through several Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based tools. “Pure calculation” tools quantify final buildings' environmental potential, while “complex tools” additionally support decision making during the planning process. It is often difficult to choose the best suitable tool, which strongly depends on the user's needs. Within the IEA EBC Annex 72, a survey was realized with the main objective of creating a comprehensive overview of the existing tools dedicated to buildings LCA. The questionnaire included the usability, functionality, compliance, data reliability and interoperability of the analysed tools. Lastly, based on the survey outcomes and their critical assessment, a procedure for the identification and selection of a tool has been proposed based on user's needs. As a result, this work outlines main features of currently available building LCA tools, for which there is a harmonized status in terms of usability and overall applied LCA methodology. Despite the need for more automatized workflows, tools' embedding is mostly not yet applicable in system chains or limited to a restricted number of tools.

Digitalisation

Building

LCA Tools

Life Cycle Assessment

Author

R. di Bari

University of Stuttgart

Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP)

R. Horn

Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP)

University of Stuttgart

S. Bruhn

Aalborg University

N. Alaux

Technische Universität Graz

M. Ruschi Mendes Saade

Technische Universität Graz

B. Soust-Verdaguer

University of Seville

T. Potrč Obrecht

Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute

Alexander Hollberg

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Building Technology

H. Birgisdottír

Aalborg University

Alexander Passer

Technische Universität Graz

R Frischknecht

treeze Ltd.

IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science

17551307 (ISSN) 17551315 (eISSN)

Vol. 1078 1 012092

SBE 2022 Berlin D-A-CH Conference: Built Environment within Planetary Boundaries, sbe22 Berlin 2022
Virtual, Online, ,

Subject Categories

Construction Management

Environmental Management

Environmental Analysis and Construction Information Technology

DOI

10.1088/1755-1315/1078/1/012092

More information

Latest update

10/18/2022