Special Issue "BIM-Based Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Buildings"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Antonio Garcia-Martinez
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Arquitectura, Patrimonio y Sostenibilidad: Acústica, Iluminación, Óptica y Energía (TEP130) Departamento de Construcciones Arquitectónicas I. Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura y Ciencias de la Construcción (IUACC), Universidad de Sevilla, Avda. Reina Mercedes 2, 41012 Sevilla, Spain
Interests: sustainable construction life cycle assessment (LCA); building information modeling (BIM); building life cycle impacts optimization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The activity carried out by the construction sector produces huge environmental, social and economic consequences at local, regional and global levels. In order to contribute to the optimization of the impacts of this essential activity, numerous current investigations try to analyze and evaluate building and construction alternatives, using different methodological approaches. Many of these research projects are based on the use of the life cycle sustainability assessment framework, which has turned out to be a set of useful methodologies that are effective for analysis and evaluation. However, the application of these tools and procedures generally consumes a large amount of time, energy and resources when applied to construction and building systems, mainly due to the qualitative and quantitative complexity of the building phenomenon. Fortunately, in recent years, the use of building information modeling (BIM) platforms have proven to be an innovative, useful and effective aid to the development of building assessments, especially in the process of calculating inventories, obtaining and visualizing results and, more recently, optimizing systems from the life cycle perspective. In order to present the current approaches and trends in this field and to show their practical applications, this Special Issue will compile a selection of research projects that use BIM platforms as a methodological basis and are carried out in the context of the environmental, economic and social assessment of construction, building and urban systems.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Garcia-Martinez
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • Building information modeling (BIM)
  • Environmental impact assessment
  • Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA)
  • Life cycle assessment (LCA)
  • Life cycle cost (LCC)
  • Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA)
  • Geographical information system (GIS)
  • Embodied and operational environmental impacts
  • Integration and visualization
  • BIM–LCA integration tools
  • Sustainable building

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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Article
BIM-Based Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings—An Investigation of Industry Practice and Needs
Sustainability 2021, 13(10), 5455; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13105455 - 13 May 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 631
Abstract
The climate debate necessitates reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. A common and standardized method of assessing this is life cycles assessment (LCA); however, time and costs are a barrier. Large efficiency potentials are associated with using data from building information models (BIM) [...] Read more.
The climate debate necessitates reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. A common and standardized method of assessing this is life cycles assessment (LCA); however, time and costs are a barrier. Large efficiency potentials are associated with using data from building information models (BIM) for the LCA, but development is still at an early stage. This study investigates the industry practice and needs for BIM–LCA, and if these are met through a prototype for the Danish context, using IFC and a 3D view. Eight qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with medium and large architect, engineering, and contractor companies, covering a large part of the Danish AEC industry. The companies used a quantity take-off approach, and a few were developing plug-in approaches. Challenges included the lack of quality in the models, thus most companies supplemented model data with other data sources. Features they found valuable for BIM–LCA included visual interface, transparency of data, automation, design evaluation, and flexibility. The 3D view of the prototype met some of the needs, however, there were mixed responses on the use of IFC, due to different workflow needs in the companies. Future BIM–LCA development should include considerations on the lack of quality in models and should support different workflows. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue BIM-Based Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Buildings)
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Article
Development of Building Information Modeling Template for Environmental Impact Assessment
Sustainability 2021, 13(6), 3092; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063092 - 11 Mar 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 652
Abstract
Eco-friendly building designs that use building information modeling (BIM) have become popular, and a variety of eco-friendly building assessment technologies that take advantage of BIM are being developed. However, existing building environmental performance assessment technologies that use BIM are linked to external assessment [...] Read more.
Eco-friendly building designs that use building information modeling (BIM) have become popular, and a variety of eco-friendly building assessment technologies that take advantage of BIM are being developed. However, existing building environmental performance assessment technologies that use BIM are linked to external assessment tools, and there exist compatibility issues among programs; it requires a considerable amount of time to address these problems, owing to the lack of experts who can operate the programs. This study aims to develop eco-friendly templates for assessing the embodied environmental impact of buildings using BIM authoring tools as part of the development of BIM-based building life cycle assessment (LCA) technologies. Therefore, an embodied environmental impact unit database was developed, for major building materials during production and operating stages, to perform embodied environmental impact assessments. Moreover, a major structural element library that uses the database was developed and a function was created to produce building environmental performance assessment results tables, making it possible to review the eco-friendliness of buildings. A case study analysis was performed to review the feasibility of the environmental performance assessment technologies. The results showed a less than 5% effective error rate in the assessment results that were obtained using the technology developed in this study compared with the assessment results based on the actual calculation and operating stage energy consumption figures, which proves the reliability of the proposed approach. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue BIM-Based Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Buildings)
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Article
Integrating BIM-Based LCA and Building Sustainability Assessment
Sustainability 2020, 12(18), 7468; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187468 - 10 Sep 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 967
Abstract
With the increasing concerns about building environmental impacts, building information modelling (BIM) has been used to perform different kinds of sustainability analysis. Among the most popular are the life cycle assessment (LCA) and building sustainability assessment (BSA). However, the integration of BIM-based LCA [...] Read more.
With the increasing concerns about building environmental impacts, building information modelling (BIM) has been used to perform different kinds of sustainability analysis. Among the most popular are the life cycle assessment (LCA) and building sustainability assessment (BSA). However, the integration of BIM-based LCA in BSA methods has not been adequately explored yet. This study addresses the relation between LCA and BSA within the BIM context for the Portuguese context. By performing an LCA for a Portuguese case study, a set of sustainability criteria from SBTool were simultaneous assessed during the process. The possibility of integrating BIM-based LCA into BSA methods can include more life cycle stages in the sustainability assessment and allow for normalising and producing more comparable results. BIM automates and connects different stages of the design process and provides information for multi-disciplinary data storage. However, there are still some constraints, such as different BSA/LCA databases and the necessity to manually introduce the embodied life cycle impacts of building materials. The scope of the BSA analysis can be expanded by integrating a complete LCA and be fostered by the support of BIM, effectively improving building sustainability according to local standards. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue BIM-Based Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Buildings)
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Review

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Review
Investigating Approaches of Integrating BIM, IoT, and Facility Management for Renovating Existing Buildings: A Review
Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 3930; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073930 - 02 Apr 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1038
Abstract
The importance of building information is highly attached to the ability of conventional storing to provide professional analysis. The Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices offer a vast amount of live data stored in heterogeneous repositories, and hence the need for smart [...] Read more.
The importance of building information is highly attached to the ability of conventional storing to provide professional analysis. The Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices offer a vast amount of live data stored in heterogeneous repositories, and hence the need for smart methodologies to facilitate IoT–BIM integration is very crucial. The first step to better integrating IoT and Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be performed by implementing the Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) to combining software and other services by replacing the sematic information that was failed to display elements of indoor conditions. The other development is to create link that able to update static models towards real-time models using SOA approach. The existing approach relies on one-way interaction; however, developing two-way communication to mimic human cognitive has become very crucial. The high-tech approach requires highly involving Cloud computations to better connect IoT devices throughout Internet infrastructure. This approach is based on the integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with real-time data from IoT devices aiming at improving construction and operational efficiencies and to provide high-fidelity BIM models for numerous applications. The paper discusses challenges, limitations, and barriers that face BIM–IoT integration and simultaneously solves interoperability issues and Cloud computing. The paper provides a comprehensive review that explores and identifies common emerging areas of application and common design patterns of the traditional BIM-IoT integration followed by devising better methodologies to integrate IoT in BIM. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue BIM-Based Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Buildings)
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