Incorporating Environmental Impacts and End-of-Life Potential for Sustainable Asset Management Decision-Making

Building and construction sector contributes up to 40% of global annual carbon emissions. Various sustainability rating systems and circular indices are currently being developed to quantify and reduce carbon emissions in the building industry. However, a methodology to quantify carbon emissions considering the entire lifecycle has yet to be developed. This paper argues that an effective approach should optimize the management of the assets by focusing on the lifecycle emissions and end-of-life impacts to deliver a sustainable and circular economy to the built environment. Hence the paper proposes a digital asset management framework with a novel index for capturing the whole-life-cycle environmental impact and circularity of the building asset. A roadmap to develop the novel Digital sustainability index (DSI) from material passports is presented by conducting a comprehensive literature review. This index enables building owners and managing authorities to adopt strategic initiatives for reducing emissions associated with the life cycle of building assets with a clear knowledge of quantified benefits in mind.