A framework for dynamic life cycle sustainability assessment and policy analysis of built environment through a system dynamics approach

Sustainability is gaining attention, particularly in the building sector, owing to its significant influence on economy, society and environment. However, most assessment methods/frameworks available for this sector focus solely or dominantly on the environmental dimension of sustainability. Hence, a sustainability assessment framework for buildings that accounts for the interdependencies amongst social, economic and environmental aspects is essential. Further, buildings also undergo several time-induced changes in their characteristics, such as changes in electricity consumption, material properties, surrounding infrastructure and energy mix that can influence their sustainability. Therefore, this paper introduces a system dynamics-based methodological framework for Dynamic Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (D-LCSA) capable of incorporating the dynamic changes in the building characteristics with time and capturing the interactions amongst different sustainability indicators. The usability and utility of the framework is demonstrated using a case study residential project in India. The case study results show that ignoring time-dependant dynamic aspects in sustainability assessment of buildings leads to underestimating the overall sustainability impacts by about 50 per cent and specific environmental impacts by about 12 per cent. Therefore, the study reinforces the need to adopt dynamic thinking through modelling and simulation to predict sustainability performance in the built environment.