Optimizing Building Life Cycle Performance: A BIM-DT Framework to Support Decision-Making for LCSA through Interactive Visualization Strategies

In today’s world, sustainable construction has become a necessity, pushing stakeholders in the building sector to integrate environmental considerations into their design and material choices. The Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology offers a promising solution by addressing environmental, economic, and social impacts in a holistic framework. However, current LCSA applications often rely on static data, limiting their use to early design stages. The research addresses these limitations by developing a semi-automated framework that integrates Building Information Modeling (BIM), LCSA, and Building Performance Simulation (BPS) under the concept of Digital Twin. By leveraging Visual Programming Language (VPL) tools and interactive visualization, the methodology supports material retrofitting and life cycle decision-making through a data-driven Decision Support System (DSS) tool. The proposed methodology integrates Dynamo (VPL) to automate processes and centralizes data through an Excel-based inventory. It combines LCSA for embodied impacts, and BPS for operational energy analysis. To enhance data interoperability, the IFC4 schema is enriched to streamline an OpenBIM approach. Results are visualized in stakeholder-specific dashboards through Power BI, enabling scenario comparisons, optimizing the decision-making process. The framework was validated through a real-world case study of an industrial plant in the North of Italy.