An Overview of LCA Integration Methods at the Early Design Stage Towards National Application

Toward achieving the UN sustainable development goals, the construction sector is adopting all possible strategies, and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a robust methodology for assessing environmental impacts. The number of studies that seek to integrate LCA into the architectural design from the early stage is rising. Frameworks, methodologies, approaches, and tools are evolving to support the sustainable construction movement. This paper aims to present an overview of LCA studies and constraints in Egypt in addition to methods and attempts used to integrate LCA at the early design stage, and that can be the first step toward facilitating the application of LCA at the national level and supporting the design process. The applied methodology used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) for database development and the Biblioshiny tool, then the focus of the review comprised the approaches that deal with LCA at the early stages of design. The results gave insights through the bibliometric analysis. It also included variant studies classified according to the applied method, such as the integration with BIM or different parametric methods. This research provides a comprehensive understanding of the current early LCA integration.