Insights into the entire building life cycle assessment (LCA): existing trends, challenges and prospective framework

Building sustainability assessment increasingly demands life cycle coverage that captures environmental burdens and trade-offs beyond operational energy, including embodied impacts and end of life (EoL) outcomes under circular economy (CE) pathways. This review synthesises recent research on how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) supports the formation of Building Sustainability Index (BSI), with particular attention to the stage-dependent distribution of impacts and the growing significance of embodied and EoL stages in low-energy buildings, methodological sensitivities associated with system boundaries, datasets, and scenario definitions, and the implications of EoL modelling and allocation choices for CE-oriented sustainability claims. The paper further examines how life cycle thinking is operationalised within major certification schemes (LEED, BREEAM and DGNB) and discusses comparability limitations when certification outcomes are interpreted as sustainability indices. By consolidating methodological evidence and practice-oriented pathways, the paper clarifies requirements for robust, transparent and comparable Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) informed sustainability indices aligned with whole-life and circularity objectives.