A review of life cycle assessment of buildings using a systematic approach

Nwodo, Martin N.; Anumba, Chimay J.

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.106290

Cited by 168 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 104 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Regarding the construction industry, LCA is used mainly to assess the environmental performance of buildings through their life stages, including emissions from building materials, the construction process, the use of energy and demolition [83][84][85][86]. Therefore, it is often applied to building certification systems and building benchmarking [87][88][89][90] or used as a tool in decision processes towards sustainable building or neighborhood design [91][92][93].…”

Section: Eco-efficiency Concept and Life Cycle Assessment To Measure mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Improving the eco-efficiency of food systems is one of the major global challenges faced by the modern world. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are commonly regarded to be less harmful to the environment, among various reasons, due to their organizational distribution and thus the shortened physical distance between primary producers and final consumers. In this paper, we empirically test this hypothesis, by assessing and comparing the environmental impacts of short and long food supply chains. Based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, we calculate eco-efficiency indicators for nine types of food distribution chains. The analysis is performed on a sample of 428 short and long food supply chains from six European countries. Our results indicate that, on average, long food supply chains may generate less negative environmental impacts than short chains (in terms of fossil fuel energy consumption, pollution, and GHG emissions) per kg of a given product. The values of eco-efficiency indicators display a large variability across analyzed chains, and especially across different types of SFSCs. The analysis shows that the environmental impacts of the food distribution process are not only determined by the geographical distance between producer and consumer, but depend on numerous factors, including the supply chain infrastructure.

show abstract

Section: Eco-efficiency Concept and Life Cycle Assessment To Measure mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The application of LCA in a building field is multi-faceted and involves the rating of sustainable green buildings, energy assessment, building refurbishments, cost, social assessment, and carbon emissions [35]. Some scholars have applied LCA to the rating of sustainable green buildings, which encouraged building sustainability assessment in practice [36,37].…”

Section: Lca In the Building Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is generally known that the calculation of BLCCE requires high costs and significant time investment [35,51], but BIM can reduce the time and effort required to manage building information and LCA data [16,52]. An increasing number of scholars have presumed that connecting BIM and LCA software could eliminate the need for manual data input and remarkably accelerate the establishment of the LCA model [52][53][54].…”

Section: Integration Of Lca and Bim In Blccementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Development of a Carbon Emissions Analysis Framework Using Building Information Modeling and Life Cycle Assessment for the Construction of Hospital Projects

Jiang

Tam

et al. 2019

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Buildings produce a large amount of carbon emissions in their life cycle, which intensifies greenhouse-gas effects and has become a great threat to the survival of humans and other species. Although many previous studies shed light on the calculation of carbon emissions, a systematic analysis framework is still missing. Therefore, this study proposes an analysis framework of carbon emissions based on building information modeling (BIM) and life cycle assessment (LCA), which consists of four steps: (1) defining the boundary of carbon emissions in a life cycle; (2) establishing a carbon emission coefficients database for Chinese buildings and adopting Revit, GTJ2018, and Green Building Studio for inventory analysis; (3) calculating carbon emissions at each stage of the life cycle; and (4) explaining the calculation results of carbon emissions. The framework developed is validated using a case study of a hospital project, which is located in areas in Anhui, China with a hot summer and a cold winter. The results show that the reinforced concrete engineering contributes to the largest proportion of carbon emissions (around 49.64%) in the construction stage, and the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) generates the largest proportion (around 53.63%) in the operational stage. This study provides a practical reference for similar buildings in analogous areas and for additional insights on reducing carbon emissions in the future.

show abstract

“…Numerous studies and reports show that life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is currently the best framework available to assess the potential environmental impacts of any activity [1][2][3][4][5]. Proofs of this are numerous review studies that focus on analysing, grouping, and comparing other previous works focused on evaluating the environmental and/or economic impact of the construction industry under the perspective of life cycle [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and Economic Prioritization of Building Energy Refurbishment Strategies with Life-Cycle Approach

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An increasing number of studies apply life-cycle assessment methodology to assess the impact of a new building or to prioritize between different building refurbishment strategies. Among the different hypotheses to consider during the application of this methodology, the selection of the impact indicator is critical, as this choice will completely change the interpretation of the results. This article proposes applying four indicators that allow analysing the results of a refurbishment project of a residential building with the life-cycle approach: non-renewable primary energy use reduction (NRPER), net energy ratio (NER), internal rate of return (IRR), and life-cycle payback (LC-PB). The combination of environmental and economic indicators when evaluating the results has allowed to prioritize among the different strategies defined for this case study. Furthermore, an extensive sensitivity assessment reflects the high uncertainty of some of the parameters and their high influence on the final results. To this end, new hypotheses related to the following parameters have been considered: reference service life of the building, estimated service life of material, operational energy use, conversion factor, energy price, and inflation rate. The results show that the NRPE use reduction value could vary up to −44%. The variation of the other indicators is also very relevant, reaching variation rates such as 100% in the NER, 450% in the IRR, and 300% in the LC-PB. Finally, the results allow to define the type of input or hypothesis that influences each indicator the most, which is relevant when calibrating the prioritization process for the refurbishment strategy.

show abstract

A review of life cycle assessment of buildings using a systematic approach

Cited by 168 publications

References 104 publications

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

Development of a Carbon Emissions Analysis Framework Using Building Information Modeling and Life Cycle Assessment for the Construction of Hospital Projects

Environmental and Economic Prioritization of Building Energy Refurbishment Strategies with Life-Cycle Approach

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About