For over a decade, the need for a sustainability assessment of the built environment has driven the development of methods and tools [4] for assessing different types of residential, commercial and institutional buildings. These methods and tools emphasize the environmental impacts related to the life cycle of buildings; however, a building can only be considered sustainable after accounting for its economic, social and cultural dimensions [5]. Furthermore, these methods assess buildings against a set of predesigned criteria and are thus not useful for selecting optimal project options [6].
International efforts to measure sustainability have been conducted, but a multidimensional approach has only been considered in a fewcases. Most cases focus on environmental aspects and overlook other aspects, such as economic, social, or cultural aspects [7]. The
investigation of these aspects is hindered by methodological limitations
and insufficient stakeholder integration [8]. Although the
different dimensions of sustainability are usually considered complementary,
it can be argued that connections and dynamics existamong them. Systems approaches accounting for these interconnections
are very important to assessing sustainability and
can be considered as one of the most difficult elements to implement
in an assessment tool or method [9].