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A. Mahdavi, R. Ries:
"Toward computational eco-analysis of building designs";
Computers and Structures, 67 (1998), 375 - 387.

This paper argues that: (a) construction and operation of buildings is internationally a major cause of resource depletion and environmental pollution, (b) traditional criteria of construction cost and energy use estimation are insufficient in view of a comprehensive environmental impact analysis of buildings, (c) LCA (life-cycle analysis), "eco-bookkeeping" and "eco-balance" approaches could be advantageously utilized in concurrence with more traditional engineering, cost estimation and energy simulation to obtain a broader building design evaluation scheme and (d) appropriate IT-based computational tools could facilitate environmentally informed, integrative decision-making throughout the building design, construction, operation and decommissioning phase. Toward this end, this paper specifically introduces the prototypical realization of a computationl tool for the integration of environmental impact modeling approaches within an object-oriented space-based CAD environment.