The life cycle assessment of smart sustainable cities

Abstract

Introduction. The problem of the life cycle-based assessment of cities (LC), involving systems of indicators for a smart sustainable city, is relevant. The objectives of the study include the review and analysis of existing LC-based methods in construction, housing and utilities sector (HUS), the review and analysis of systems of indicators, evaluation frameworks, benchmarking systems that exist both in the format of standards and are proposed as research developments, the review of the software used for the assessment of the LC of facilities in construction and HUS, the review of open-access databases for the LC assessment of construction and HUS, drafting a thematic plan for the training course “Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Cities”. Materials and methods. Research articles in indexed journals, standards, guidelines, and specifications were used. The search was performed using the following databases: eLIBRARY.RU, Google Scholar, Scopus, ScienceDirect, ISI Web of Knowledge, researchgate.net, standards.ru, iso.org, shop.bsigroup.com. The key words, used to search for the information, include life cycle assessment (LCA), smart sustainable cities, city assessment, sustainability assessment, environmental assessment, environmental impact, sustainability indicators, construction, housing and utilities sector (HUS). Results. A sample thematic plan for the training course titled “The life cycle assessment of sustainable cities” was developed on the basis of the analysis of the sources and the systematization of the information thus obtained. Conclusions. The research and its results show that the problem of LC-based assessment of cities, involving the use of indicator systems for smart sustainable cities, has many solutions. The goal, which was to accumulate, analyze and use the information in the training course, has been achieved. Of particular practical interest are the LCA software tools available in construction and HUS. Of great importance for the LCA are open-access databases focused on construction and HUS.