New approach to life-cycle analysis in building sustainability rating systems

Abstract

Sustainability assessment and rating systems are intended to foster more sustainable design, construction, operation, maintenance and disassembly/deconstruction promoting and making possible a better integration of environment, societal, and cost concerns with other traditional decision criteria. The use of improved and building technologies can contribute considerably to better environmental cycle and then to the sustainability of the constructions. It is widely recognised in the of Building Sustainability Assessment that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a much preferable method for evaluating the environmental pressure caused by materials, Building assemblies and the whole life-cycle of a building. Nevertheless, LCA tools are not extensively used in building design and most of building sustainability assessment and systems are not comprehensive or consistently LCA-based. Reasons for this failure above all related to the huge variety and amount of material flows and processes of building’s Lifecycle and to the complexity of the stages of a LCA. This paper will present the difficulties and possible solutions to integrate more accurate environmental methods in rating systems. In this context, the paper will also present the work that is being carried out in the development of the Portuguese Building Sustainability Assessment system (SBTool PT)