A Study On BIM-LCA Based Green Building Design Optimization

Normally,there are substantial resource and energy consumption for buildings throughout the whole life along with adverse environmental impacts and costs.Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)and Life Cycle Cost(LCC)are widely used around the world for the building sustainability assessment as a consequence of its long-term perspective,quantitative calculation method and high-quality database.The classic LCA is based on input data of construction materials and energy consumption from 2D drawings which is time-consuming.Therefore,it is necessary to substitute this tedious process by integrating BIM and LCA to make a high efficient tool for optimizing and evaluating green building design,which can be applied in all stages and support the environmental and economic assessment from different detail degree and precisions.This study conducts a comprehensive review of LCA methodology including the framework,evaluation system,common tools and database;moreover,we also integrate BIM and LCA to break the limitation of classic LCA methodology.Then,by analyzing the differences of design process between green building design and classic building design,we identify the design focus under various targets and suggest the optimizing method based on BIM-LCA during the design process of green building design.Next,the existing BIM-LCA tools as well as their characteristics are introduced;specifically,we discuss the application of BIM-LCA in different stages of green building design.Then we investigate the optimizing process and critical parameters of BIM-LCA in all design stages including concept design,preliminary design and construction drawing design based on a case study.Results indicate that the optimized decisions of LCA are different from those only considering the energy saving effects in use phase.Notably,the BIM-LCA can support the design optimization with various precisions and details from the beginning,leading to a more systematic and scientific decisions for green building design.Finally,this method increases the operability of BIM-LCA optimization during the green building design process substantially.