CivilEng, Vol. 6, Pages 36: Monetizing Environmental Impacts into Environmental Costs During Prefabricated Building Construction: A 5D BIM-Enabled Analysis
CivilEng doi: 10.3390/civileng6030036
Authors:
Xian Gao
Xilong Chen
Kun Lu
Xueyuan Deng
Although prefabricated buildings offer environmental advantages, their construction process inevitably generates environmental impacts. However, current research on prefabricated buildings focuses on the environmental impact level, and there is a lack of intelligent tools for analyzing their spatial and temporal dimensions. Therefore, this study develops a framework using 5D building information modeling (BIM) to monetize environmental impacts into environmental costs for prefabricated building construction. This framework includes defining boundaries and indicators, obtaining a resource inventory using the 5D BIM coding system, calculating environmental impact results, and converting environmental impacts into environmental costs. Taking a prefabricated substation as a case study, its environmental costs are 172.81 CNY/m2, with these costs caused by climate change accounting for the largest proportion (91.2%). This study unifies different environmental impacts into a single monetary form, providing stakeholders with intuitive indicators. It also expands 5D BIM applications from conventional costs to environmental costs, which can display their spatiotemporal changes.