Using a Life Cycle Assessment Approach for Optimizing Multi-Objectives in Construction Projects: Fid-Bau Portal

Using a Life Cycle Assessment Approach for Optimizing Multi-Objectives in Construction Projects

Ozcan-Deniz, Gulbin / Zhu, Yimin

With environmental concerns as another dimension of constraints in the built environment, life cycle assessment (LCA) has gained tremendous importance. It has been commonly accepted among researchers that environmental impacts of construction operations need to be analyzed and monitored throughout the whole life cycle, including raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, construction, and end-of-life steps. Furthermore, life cycle approach has brought the concept of systems thinking into the built environment to understand the interactions among various systems and elements of these systems. Previous studies have focused on modeling construction projects by using systems thinking. This research builds on these studies in using the results of construction system models to optimize multiple project objectives. Environmental impact is set as a new project objective to reflect environmental concerns throughout the project life. Time and cost are selected to be optimized with environmental impact considering their importance for owners and contractors. Multi-objective optimization is used as an effective tool to optimize these three potentially conflicting objectives in construction projects. This paper aims to model the optimization process of time, cost and environmental impact (TCEI) with the help of an LCA approach and multi-objective optimization techniques. LCA will allow observing and analyzing project objectives (TCEI) throughout the life cycle of the project, while the multi-objective optimization procedure will help to view the interdependency of time, cost and environmental impact by considering the life cycle of construction projects.