Our vision is that humans can attenuate and control positively the impact of their buildings on the environment and mitigate the effects of climate change. This can be achieved by a new generation of life cycle assessment methods and tools that are model-based, continuously learn from real-time data, while informing effective operation and management strategies of buildings and districts. In that respect, current LCA methods present important limitations and gaps, including: (a) Lack of reasoning and decision support capabilities, such as exploring "what if" scenarios for the evaluation of alternative design options and devising adapted strategies, thus promoting active control of buildings and districts. (b) Lack of alignment with domain models, e.g. BIM (Building Information Modelling), GIS (Geographical Information Systems), and LCA data structures. (c) Lack of support of temporal information. There is a need to factor in temporal information in the life cycle inventory (LCI) and Impact Assessment (LCIA) phases to address maintenance, operation, deconstruction, disposal and recycling stages. The proposed research addresses the challenge of leveraging digital built environment resources by using semantic web technologies to deliver life cycle assessment solutions to our built assets. Our hypothesis is that: life cycle assessment underpinned by semantics and informed by dynamic data paves the way to more accurate life cycle impact assessment while supporting life cycle decision making and active control of buildings and districts. In a nutshell, the aim of SemanticLCA is the development of a (near) real-time semantic capability that exploits a wide range of digital data sources and leverages artificial intelligence to assess the whole-life cycle environmental impacts of built assets. The following research questions are posited: RQ1: Can the use of semantics, including BIM (IFC) and GIS (CityGML), to integrate and contextualise existing life cycle inventory databases, provide a sound basis to streamline the life cycle assessment process of buildings and districts? RQ2: Can access to dynamic data, managed in a BIM and GIS friendly time series database, provide more accurate accounts of environmental impacts during the construction and operation stages? RQ3: Can the resulting SemanticLCA environment assist in decision making by non-experts by exploring a wide range of options and scenarios with the least environmental impact, while also advising on corrective plans? Our work programme involves three Work-Packages (WP), each addressing one of our posited research questions, and a fourth cross-cutting WP addressing demonstration and validation activities. The evaluation will be carried out in two demonstration sites: Cardiff (UK) and Belval (Luxembourg). The Cardiff demonstration will be carried out in the Queen's building (School of Engineering) and scaled up to the 130 buildings owned and managed by Cardiff university, majority of which are located in the city centre. The LIST demonstration will be carried out in the Maison de l'Innovation in Belval and scaled up to the entire district of Belval (managed by Fonds Belval). Given the complexity of LCA at district level, validation will utilise a simulation based approach with a subset of use cases demonstrated and validated in real operation conditions. The validation work will leverage ongoing developments of city platforms for Cardiff and Belval, as illustrated on the CUSP website: www.cuspplatform.com. SemanticLCA is supported by 10 partners and an experienced team of investigators from Cardiff University and LIST bringing together complementary expertise in: a) AI applications in the built environment, b) semantic contextualisation of multi-scale built environment data, c) intelligent cloud/edge computing, d) Life cycle assessment methods and tools, e) Building Information Modelling for asset modelling and energy efficiency.

The construction sector is strategically important to the UK economy, employing 3.1 million people (>9% of the workforce), producing £370 billion in turnover, and exporting more than £8 billion in products and services. However, its current philosophy is resource and cost inefficient and environmentally unsustainable, through its low productivity, slow technology adoption and tendency to demolish and rebuild. Metal 3D printing offers opportunities to solve these challenges and lead to a more productive, innovative and sustainable construction sector. Metal 3D printing technology has transformed other engineering disciplines, including the biomedical and aeronautical sectors, while its application within the construction sector is still in its infancy. The technology has been fundamentally proven through the MX3D Bridge, the first metal 3D printed structure that was opened in July 2021, however there are still a number of barriers preventing more widespread adoption. Current equipment and processes produce elements that have significant material and geometric variability, within the same build and between repeated builds, which is not optimal for real-world use. Furthermore, the limited availability of suitable printing equipment has prevented research into the development of this novel manufacturing technique and its applications to the construction sector. ICWAAM will be a globally unique metal 3D printing facility, dedicated to large-scale, cost-effective applications for the construction sector. It will offer new research capabilities into the printing process, automated manufacture and the repair and upgrade of our critical infrastructure, along with the printing of complex, materially efficient geometries, which are uneconomical or impossible with standard techniques. ICWAAM will fundamentally challenge the current philosophy of the construction industry and lead to its transformation into a more productive, innovative and sustainable sector, with increased worker safety. Without direct access to large-scale metal 3D printing equipment, such as ICWAAM, researchers are unable to undertake this critical research and development, to solve the longstanding challenges in the construction sector.