Purpose: This paper reviews the state-of-the art research in life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to buildings. It focuses on current research trends, and elaborates on gaps and directions for future research. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted to identify current research and applications of LCA in buildings. The proposed review methodology includes (i) identifying recent authoritative research publications using established search engines, (ii) screening and retaining relevant publications, and (iii) extracting relevant LCA applications for buildings and analyzing their underpinning research. Subsequently, several research gaps and limitations were identified, which have informed our proposed future research directions. Results and discussions: This paper argues that humans can attenuate and positively control the impact of their buildings on the environment, and as such mitigate the effects of climate change. This can be achieved by a new generation of LCA methods and tools that are model based and continuously learn from real-time data, while informing effective operation and management strategies of buildings and districts. Therefore, the consideration of the time dimension in product system modeling is becoming essential to understand the resulting pollutant emissions and resource consumption. This time dimension is currently missing in life cycle inventory databases. A further combination of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models using time-dependent characterization factors can lead to more comprehensive and reliable LCA results. Conclusions and recommendations: This paper promotes the concept of semantic-based dynamic (real-time) LCA, which addresses temporal and spatial variations in the local built and environmental ecosystem, and thus more effectively promotes a “cradle-to-grave-to-reincarnation” environmental sustainability capability. Furthermore, it is critical to leverage digital building resources (e.g., connected objects, semantic models, and artificial intelligence) to deliver accurate and reliable environmental assessments.

Reducing carbon emissions and addressing environmental policies in the construction domain has been intensively explored with solutions ranging from energy efficiency techniques with building informatics to user behavior modelling and monitoring. Such strategies have managed to improve current practices in managing buildings, however decarbonizing the built environment and reducing the energy performance gap remains a complex undertaking that requires more comprehensive and sustainable solutions. In this context, building information modelling (BIM), can help the sustainability agenda as the digitalization of product and process information provides a unique opportunity to optimize energy-efficiency-related decisions across the entire lifecycle and supply chain. BIM is foreseen as a means to waste and emissions reduction, performance gap minimization, in-use energy enhancements, and total lifecycle assessment. It also targets the whole supply chain related to design, construction, as well as management and use of facilities, at the different qualifications levels (including blue-collar workers). In this paper, we present how building information modelling can be utilized to address energy efficiency in buildings in the operation phase, greatly contributing to achieving carbon emissions targets. In this paper, we provide two main contributions: (i) we present a BIM-oriented methodology for supporting building energy optimization, based on which we identify few training directions with regards to BIM, and (ii) we provide an application use case as identified in the European research project “Sporte2” to demonstrate the advantages of BIM in energy efficiency with respect to several energy metrics.