About this Research Topic
The global urban population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion people by 2050. This significant growth will be accompanied by an increased demand for new infrastructure, buildings and construction products. The increase in environmental impact due to the surge in new constructions will add to the already excessive emissions due to other human activities. In order to avoid reaching unfavorable levels of greenhouse gas emissions, bringing the world closer to tipping points that shall make climate change effects irreversible, decision makers must not only find solutions to lower buildings’ environmental impacts, but also rely on proper tools and methods to assure that urban development will not bring about costly environmental events.
Sustainability assessment of buildings is a complex task due to the multiplicity of activities, components and actors involved throughout a building’s lifecycle. Numerous assessment tools exist, aiming at quantifying the building sector’s environmental performance, either to assure that reduction targets are met or to compare solutions at material, system or building level to decrease the overall impact of constructions. This Research Topic aims to provide an overview of all available tools to measure a building’s environmental performance, at one or many stages of its life cycle. Contributions are expected to either describe or propose a certain tool, compare amongst different options of tools, or apply a (set of) tool(s) to one or more case studies.
The contributions are expected to cover the themes listed below, but further scopes can be included if in line with the previously presented goal:
• Developing novel methods to measure building life cycle environmental impacts and its sustainability
• Assessing the use phase impact: status quo and state-of-the-art advances in predictive behavior modelling, artificial intelligence techniques, rebound effect
• Assessment of building design: design for sustainability, design digitalization approaches for sustainability assessment
• Regional/local sustainability assessment: spatial differentiation, regionalization, accounting for local specifities
• Calculation tools to account for buildings’ embodied impact
• Combination of life cycle-oriented tools to measure building sustainability (e.g., LCA, LCC and Social LCA)
• Uncertainties in sustainability assessment tools
• Building stock modelling and prediction
Sustainability assessment of buildings is a complex task due to the multiplicity of activities, components and actors involved throughout a building’s lifecycle. Numerous assessment tools exist, aiming at quantifying the building sector’s environmental performance, either to assure that reduction targets are met or to compare solutions at material, system or building level to decrease the overall impact of constructions. This Research Topic aims to provide an overview of all available tools to measure a building’s environmental performance, at one or many stages of its life cycle. Contributions are expected to either describe or propose a certain tool, compare amongst different options of tools, or apply a (set of) tool(s) to one or more case studies.
The contributions are expected to cover the themes listed below, but further scopes can be included if in line with the previously presented goal:
• Developing novel methods to measure building life cycle environmental impacts and its sustainability
• Assessing the use phase impact: status quo and state-of-the-art advances in predictive behavior modelling, artificial intelligence techniques, rebound effect
• Assessment of building design: design for sustainability, design digitalization approaches for sustainability assessment
• Regional/local sustainability assessment: spatial differentiation, regionalization, accounting for local specifities
• Calculation tools to account for buildings’ embodied impact
• Combination of life cycle-oriented tools to measure building sustainability (e.g., LCA, LCC and Social LCA)
• Uncertainties in sustainability assessment tools
• Building stock modelling and prediction
Keywords: Buildings, Sustainability, Assessment, Methods, Tools
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
