A Comprehensive Review of Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment for Buildings: Exploring Key Processes and Methodologies
Maryam Salati, António Aguiar Costa, José Dinis Silvestre
Abstract
Climate change presents a worldwide challenge, with buildings significantly contributing to carbon emissions throughout their life cycles. Numerous assessments have been conducted to measure buildings’ global warming potential (GWP). However, the significance of the environmental impacts at different times is affected by varying external conditions, and their magnitude also changes over time, a factor often overlooked in conventional LCA studies. Dynamic LCA, emerging in the past decade, incorporates temporal variations in parameters (e.g., energy mix) and processes (e.g., technological advancement) that influence the results and interpretation of the assessed systems. Influential factors, functional pathways, and assessment outcomes vary across locations, underscoring the need for a comprehensive dynamic LCA framework encompassing diverse, dynamic properties. This review paper aims to pinpoint common dynamic parameters, processes, and methodologies used in building modelling to enhance understanding of the latest trends in predicting associated dynamics of LCA. From the Google Scholar database, this study collected 50 papers. The results were categorised into eight typical dynamic processes and eight common approaches for predicting the dynamic evolution of LCA. Finally, we discuss the limitations and formulate some recommendations in this scope.