Environmental optimization and benchmarking of walls through a BIM plugin

January 6, 2025

Despite substantial progress in sustainable building design, a significant gap remains in the integration of building information modeling (BIM) and life cycle assessment (LCA); specifically, a gap exists in the optimization of the LCA design. The present study addresses this gap by presenting a BIM plugin that incorporates the LCA to optimize the design of sustainable buildings. Benchmarks were studied in the literature review, leading to a proposal for the optimized integration of the BIM-LCA tool. This innovative tool enables the evaluation of multiple environmental impacts, such as global warming potential, abiotic depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone depletion potential, and photochemical ozone creation potential, during the design stages. In addition to calculating the impacts, the plugin offers designers a range of construction system options ranked by their environmental impact, as long as the automation of the BIM object replacement is included in the project to facilitate design solution benchmarking and informed decision-making to reduce carbon emissions. A case study demonstrates the utility and effectiveness of this BIM-LCA integration tool specifically designed to integrate benchmarking in optimized wall design, thereby advancing sustainable building design practices following the European directives for sustainability (CEN, 2019) and a level(s) framework (EC, 2021).

Authors in the community:

• 

  M

  Maria Teresa Henriques Alves Ferreira

  ist428983

  Affiliations and sources

  In: orcid

  ID: 175141328

  In: cienciavitae

  ID: 4502953

AO - Author's Original

Taylor & Francis

Architectural Engineering and Design Management

10.1080/17452007.2024.2448811

other-humanities - Other humanities

eng - English

https://doi.org/10.1080/17452007.2024.2448811