A Review of Building Life Cycle Assessment Methods

This article aims to review methods of life cycle assessment (LCA) in the published papers. The main focus is on methodological limitations and advances of the published articles which as a basis for further research on the gaps in the relevant literature.Due to the close relationship between the construction industry and environmental pollution, it is important to pay attention to environmental effects of this industry. Currently, LCA is regards as one of the relatively new tools that help in assessing the environmental impacts and its implementation in the construction industry. LCA in construction industry is a systematic analysis of industrial processes and products and investigates energy flow and material consumption, waste released into the environment, and measures and evaluates environmental improvement Hence, the purpose of this article is to review the LCA methods and its steps affecting the environment and to examine the existing objectives and limitations. Studies show that up until now, life cycle has been used for zero energy buildings on an urban scale. In this context less attention has been paid to evaluate urban-scale residential buildings in public use through LCA. This tool can be used in residential buildings as well as in reconstruction projects to make the building more resistant to energy consumption. This requires identification of the effective parameters and the necessary information for in-depth analysis of such projects.