Challenges and opportunities for integrating BIM and LCA: Methodological choices and framework development

Safari, Kaveh; AzariJafari, Hessam

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2021.102728

Cited by 84 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…According to Mequignon et al [54], the lifespan of buildings has a significant impact on the environment. Safari and AzariJafari [55] state that most studies have shown that by focusing on the operational phase, which is the longest phase of a building's life cycle, the greatest environmental impact reduction can be achieved and the lifetime of case studies in the literature ranges from 30 to 100 years. Our study further agrees with studies that declare that building materials contribute significantly to the environmental impacts of low-energy buildings [25,26], and a clear definition of the lifetime of buildings and materials should be an important upcoming topic for LCA in the field of buildings [56].…”

Section: Lifespan Of Buildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of the Environmental Performance between Construction Materials and Operational Energy of Nearly Zero-Energy Wood-Based Educational Building

Mitterpach

Vaňová

Šedivka

et al. 2022

Forests

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This paper focused on the environmental performance of a nearly zero-energy wood-based educational building (NZEB-W) via the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). It identifies the environmental impacts of construction materials and operational energy demands of the NZEB-W and compares them using the SimaPro 8 software with the IMPACT 2002+ method. The LCIA results from NZEB-W show that the overall environmental impact of construction materials (98.9 Pt) and 45 years operational energy demands (98.6 Pt) will be at the same level. Its overall environmental impact 197.75 Pt for 45 years is relatively small. NZEB-W has the greatest impact on the environment in the category of damage respiratory inorganics (34.5%), 419 kg PM2.5 eq from construction materials, and 271 kg PM2.5 eq from operational energy for 45 years; follows global warming (31.7%), 1.98 × 105 kg CO2 eq from construction materials, and 4.23 × 105 kg CO2 eq from operational energy for 45 years; and non-renewable energy (21.8%), 2.82 × 106 MJ primary from construction materials, and 3.73 × 106 MJ primary from operational energy for 45 years. As this environmental assessment shows, the material composition of construction materials compared to the energy consumption in the use phase is an essential element for understanding the life cycle impact of buildings.

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Section: Lifespan Of Buildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of the Environmental Performance between Construction Materials and Operational Energy of Nearly Zero-Energy Wood-Based Educational Building

Mitterpach

Vaňová

Šedivka

et al. 2022

Forests

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“…Additionally, in the fifth type, LCA information is attached to BIM objects. Further, Safari and Jafari [43], based on how the data are collected and used as well as the process of data exchange and type of computation, classified the integration approaches into three types: conventional, static, and dynamic. The conventional approach extracts the data from BIM in the form of an Excel file and manually enters the data into LCA tools.…”

Section: Bim-lca Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…LCA is most valuable in the early design stages because at the end of the design phases, conducting an LCA for assessing different design options becomes not quite useful when the most important decisions are already made and the large-scale design improvement opportunities are lost [43]. However, the level of development (LoD) of the BIM model is not sufficiently high for a detailed LCA in the early stages of design.…”

Section: Bim-lca Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, an entire LCA database that is matched to the asset hierarchy classification within the BIM model is expected. Researchers suggested developing the data structure of the LCA database following the granularity of the BIM model, meanwhile directing towards the automatic compilation of data exchange by using a common naming of elements [43,[47][48][49]. Cavalliere et al [50] suggested using different LCA databases with different levels of details for the specific LoD of the BIM.…”

Section: Bim-lca Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Conceptual Framework for Estimating Building Embodied Carbon Based on Digital Twin Technology and Life Cycle Assessment

et al. 2021

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Low-carbon building design requests an estimation of total embodied carbon as the environmental performance metric for comparison of different design options in early design stages. Due to a lack of consensus on the system boundaries in building life cycle assessment (LCA), the carbon estimation results obtained by the current methods are often disputable. In this regard, this paper proposes a method for estimating building embodied carbon based on digital twin technology and LCA. The proposed method is advantageous over others by providing (1) a cradle-to-cradle LCA and (2) an automated data communication between LCA and building information modelling (BIM) databases. Because data for the processes in the life cycle are collected via digital twin technology in a standard and consistent way, the obtained results will be considered credible. So far, a conceptual framework is developed based on a comprehensive literature review, which consists of three parts. In the first part, formulas for LCA are given. In the second part, a hybrid approach combining semantic web with a relational database for BIM and radio-frequency identification (RFID) integration is described. In the third part, how to design the LCA database and how to link LCA with BIM are described. The conceptual framework proposed is tested for its reasonableness by a small hypothetical case study.

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“…In recent years, the need to apply the life cycle approach to the design and maintenance of road infrastructures has further promoted the use of building information modeling (BIM)based tools, moving forward from the 3d visualization [7], [8] and interference detection [9] to the integration of more advanced information in the design framework to actively support design and management tasks [10]. so, in its most developed form, BIM should be observed as a digital and smart representation of data-enriched objects created through the collaboration between the involved parties to provide feedback at the earliest possible time, improve the decision-making process and increase project efficiency at all its stages [11]. for this reason, BIM can effectively help designers in storing, analyzing and reporting the information related to the life cycle environmental sustainability of a project.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

BIM-LCA Integration Framework for Sustainable Road Pavement Maintenance Practices

Oreto¹,

Biancardo²,

Veropalumbo³

et al. 2021

Int. J. TDI

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the latest advancements in road asphalt materials and construction technologies have increased the difficulty for engineers to select the appropriate pavement design solution with consideration of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. on the other hand, infrastructure building information modeling (BIM) tools allow practitioners to efficiently store and manage large amounts of data, supporting decision making in road asphalt pavement design and management. this research contributes to setting up a dynamic LCA tool for the specific evaluation of designed road asphalt pavement solutions involving alternative materials and advanced recycling technologies; the tool is structured to minimize the need of input data by the designer, that are usually unknown during the early design stage, and automate the entire LCA calculation process to reduce the designer efforts and avoid any errors during data transcription. A traditional BIM workflow was integrated with additional user-defined property sets to simultaneously compute the environmental impact of the entire life cycle of the asphalt pavement, and dynamically update the result basing on the design thickness of the pavement layers, the specific features of materials and an external database of several life cycle impact category indicators that can be edited and updated gradually during more advanced design stage. the proposed BIM-LCA aims to be a practical and dynamic way to integrate environmental considerations into road pavement design, encouraging the use of digital tools in road industry and ultimately supporting a pavement maintenance decision-making process oriented toward circular economy.

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Challenges and opportunities for integrating BIM and LCA: Methodological choices and framework development

Cited by 84 publications

References 90 publications

A Comparison of the Environmental Performance between Construction Materials and Operational Energy of Nearly Zero-Energy Wood-Based Educational Building

A Comparison of the Environmental Performance between Construction Materials and Operational Energy of Nearly Zero-Energy Wood-Based Educational Building

A Conceptual Framework for Estimating Building Embodied Carbon Based on Digital Twin Technology and Life Cycle Assessment

BIM-LCA Integration Framework for Sustainable Road Pavement Maintenance Practices

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