Optimal Planning of Sustainable Buildings: Integration of Life Cycle Assessment and Optimization in a Decision Support System (DSS)

Abstract

Energy efficiency measures in buildings can provide for a significant reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A sustainable design and planning of technologies for energy production should be based on economic and environmental criteria. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to quantify the environmental impacts over the whole cycle of life of production plants. Optimization models can support decisions that minimize costs and negative impacts. In this work, a multi-objective decision problem is formalized that takes into account LCA calculations and that minimizes costs and GHG emissions for general buildings. A decision support system (DSS) is applied to a real case study in the Northern Italy, highlighting the advantage provided by the installation of renewable energy. Moreover, a comparison among different optimal and non optimal solution was carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DSS.

Keywords

• life cycle assessment (LCA)
• optimization
• decision support system (DSS)
• nearly-zero energy buildings
• sustainable buildings