The trade-off between economic and environmental impacts of residential buildings in early design stages

The economic and environmental performance of buildings largely depend on the design stage. Design choices with a unilateral focus on the reduction in environmental impacts for developing low-carbon and energy efficient building practice may increase the cost of the building, as there is a trade-off problem between economic and environmental performance of a building. To address this issue, this research proposed a framework for making appropriate design decisions by solving the trade-off problem between economic and environmental performance of buildings in their early design stage. This framework combined a BIM and LCA integration approach with a machine learning-based optimization method. The developed framework was validated by a mid-rise residential building in China, which showed the potential to simultaneously reduce the cost and carbon emissions of the building by identifying the optimal design solutions that balance the trade-offs between economic and environmental impacts. The results revealed that for a mid-rise residential building in hot summer and cold winter climate zone in China, small increases in economic cost (102.57 Yuan/m2) could result in a reduction in carbon emissions by 2387.02 kg CO2eq/m2 in early building design practice. The framework proposed in this research provides insights in the optimization of economic and environmental performance of a building.