Sustainability in the Civil Construction Based on Emergy Analysis Theory (EmA): A Systematic Review of Literature

In recent years, the demand for natural resources has increased worldwide. Given this scenario, to assess sustainability in a process, some tools were developed. Emergy Analysis is an alternative tool, which presents in its concept the list of all the energy needed for a system to produce a product/service, based on the energy consumed from its resources. Thus, a systematic literature review on Emergy Analysis in the construction industry is carried out through an analysis of articles published between 2000 and 2019. Data and information are compiled and presented, considering topics such as the number of papers published, the research institutions that investigate this issue, and the baseline adopted in previous studies. Besides, it was possible to identify that the planning and construction stages of sustainable urban projects adopt EmA and the characteristics of the main mathematical models used in this tool since due to the complexity and difficulty of interpretation of the data, it is necessary to address the assumptions of the models used, to calculate indicators of sustainability.