BIM-DLCA: An integrated dynamic environmental impact assessment model for buildings

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important and widely used environmental impact quantification methodology. Recently, temporal variations have generated renewed interests in LCA, with dynamic LCA (DLCA) becoming a new research trend. Traditional data collection approaches are considerably time and effort intensive, with major challenges associated with the acquisition of high quality data that are available. This study integrates building information modeling (BIM) with DLCA to develop a new assessment model for buildings. It follows the basic LCA paradigm and includes five parts: goal and scope definition, BIM module, dynamic database, dynamic assessment, and interpretation. In the BIM-DLCA model, BIM was used to extract material information and the construction schedule. A number of analysis software and simulation tools were used to quantify the temporal elementary flows throughout the lifecycle of the building. Various forms of dynamic data were aggregated to create a database that supports dynamic assessment. A case study was used to testify the BIM-DLCA model and the case study's outcomes indicate that BIM has the potential to simplify data collection process and support DLCA. The proposed BIM-DLCA model is operable in practice. With the rapid development of digitalization and intelligence, the proposed BIM-DLCA model lays an important foundation for future assessment studies and promotes smart LCA.