2012 Volume 8 Issue 3 Pages 251-257
This article is to provide the discussion on the development of LCA methodology to be applied on cities and regions for the objective grounds and information to plan and evaluate alternative future scenarios of the integrative management of urban buildings and infrastructure, environmental facilities and land use patterns. After discussing growing demand for sustainable development of urban and regional scale in developed and developing countries, three fields of LCA research are reviewed. Research development to apply LCA methodologies on built environments provides extensive application on urban infrastructure, followed by the LCA approach on regional resource circulation which includes the evaluation research of industrial symbiosis analysis developments and projects. The approach provides the innovative LCA application through conceptual discussion and implementation analysis for international case studies. The discussions for academic challenges are discussed as the following; first, co-benefit approach is proposed to quantitatively plan and evaluate various range of urban and environmental management. Secondly cross-boundary evaluation methodology to compile LCA is proposed. Finally, integrative urban scenario simulation system is discussed to compile physical analysis model with urban GIS database and LCA extended evaluation methodology.
