Open AccessLCA and LCC as decision-making tools for a sustainable circular building process
Author(s) -
Serena Giorgi,
Monica Lavagna,
Andrea Campioli
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
iop conference series. earth and environmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.179
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1755-1307
pISSN - 1755-1315
DOI - 10.1088/1755-1315/296/1/012027
Subject(s) - circular economy , sustainability , reuse , life cycle assessment , process (computing) , context (archaeology) , resource efficiency , resilience (materials science) , risk analysis (engineering) , sustainable design , environmental economics , engineering , computer science , management science , business , production (economics) , economics , waste management , ecology , paleontology , physics , thermodynamics , macroeconomics , biology , operating system
Resilience can be interpreted as the capacity to overcome sudden negative events, including those caused by environmental impacts, by minimizing their effects. Through the application of circular economy, built environment can be more resilient, decoupling the human well-being by resources consumption and waste generation. Within a circular approach, buildings are considered “material banks” and materials reuse/recycling is promoted. In this context, it is important to verify the life cycle sustainability of the new circular practices, linking the economic and environmental sustainability with circularity. In fact, resource efficiency and waste management in term of reduction of material flows, don’t represent certainly sustainable solutions. In this paper, LCA and LCC methodologies, which are scientific methodologies used to quantitatively assess the environmental and economic impacts, are investigated. Through a literature review, the paper analyses the state of the art regarding the application of Life Cycle tools for evaluating circular strategies, at the building level and at material level; then the use of Life Cycle tools for decision-making in the circular design process is investigated. Through the scientific literature review, the methodological assumption to assess the sustainability in decision-making is shown. Finally, the limitation of the methodology is highlighted and the improvement necessary to promote the use of Life Cycle tools in decision-making is discussed.