A Harmonized Dataset of High-Resolution Embodied Life Cycle Assessment Results for Buildings in North America: Dataset Only

dataset

posted on 2025-05-05, 19:15 authored by Brad BenkeBrad Benke, Manuel ChafartManuel Chafart, Yang ShenYang Shen, Milad AshtianiMilad Ashtiani, Stephanie CarlisleStephanie Carlisle, Kathrina SimonenKathrina Simonen

This is a high-resolution dataset of building design characteristics, life cycle inventories, and environmental impact assessment results for 292 building projects in the United States and Canada. The dataset contains harmonized and non-aggregated LCA model results across life cycle stages, building elements, and building materials to enable detailed analysis, comparisons, and data reuse. It includes over 90 building design and LCA features to assess distributions and trends of material use and environmental impacts. Uniquely, the data were crowd-sourced from designers conducting LCAs of real-world building projects.

The dataset is composed of two files:

buildings_metadata.xlsx includes all project metadata and LCA parameters for every project associated with a unique index number to cross-reference across other files. This also includes various calculated summaries of LCI and LCIA totals and intensities per project.
full_lca_results.xlsx includes LCI and LCIA results per material and life cycle stage of each building project.
data_glossary.xlsx identifies and defines each feature of the dataset including its name, data structure, syntax, units, descriptions, and more.
material_definitions.xlsx a full list of material groups, types, and descriptions of what they include.

This dataset is documented and described in a Data Descriptor, published and citable as follows:

Benke, B., Chafart, M., Shen, Y. et al. A Harmonized Dataset of High-Resolution Embodied Life Cycle Assessment Results for Buildings in North America. Sci Data 12, 1085 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05216-0

When referencing this work, please cite both the Data Descriptor and the most recent dataset version on this Fighshare DOI.

The dataset also appears on the Github repository: https://github.com/Life-Cycle-Lab/wblca-benchmark-v2-data. Access to the code used to prepare this dataset is available on an additional Github repository: https://github.com/Life-Cycle-Lab/wblca-benchmark-v2-data-preparation.

Release Notes:

2025-02-24 - First public release
2025-05-05 - Title revised and two supplementary dataset files added: data_glossary.xlsx and material_definitions.xlsx.