Environmental life cycle assessment and optimization of buildings

The work aims to present initial efforts to the development of an integrated user friendly (architect-oriented) tool for the environmental assessment and optimization of buildings. The tool will focus on the preliminary design phase, where improvements, having a major influence on the building lifecycle, are still possible. A software tool for dynamic simulation of the building lifecycle will be coupled to an open source framework for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) calculations. In order to evaluate building design alternatives according to environmental, economic and comfort criteria, the development of an optimal solution selection strategy approach will be tackled. Also the economically optimal combination of energy saving measures and a hierarchy of energy savings investments will be taken into account. In a further step, the developed approach will then be applied to a concrete case study.