GBMP-LCA: A Gradient Boosting–Based Framework for Performance Prediction and Life-Cycle Optimization of Green Building Materials

Abstract

The accelerated adoption of green building materials is essential for reducing the environmental footprint of the construction sector, yet accurately predicting their long-term performance and lifecycle impacts remains a major challenge due to complex material compositions and heterogeneous durability mechanisms. Conventional experimental and physics-based approaches are often costly and limited in scalability, motivating the integration of data-driven methods for sustainable material design and optimization. In this study, we propose GBMP-LCA, a Gradient Boosting–Based framework for performance prediction and life-cycle optimization of green building materials. The proposed framework systematically integrates material composition parameters, physical and mechanical properties, durability indicators, and embodied carbon metrics to model key performance outcomes such as service life and strength retention. A LightGBM-based gradient boosting model is employed to capture nonlinear relationships among multi-source features, while SHAP-based interpretability analysis is introduced to quantify feature contributions and guide material composition optimization under sustainability constraints. Experimental results on a compiled dataset of diverse green building materials show that the proposed GBMP-LCA framework consistently outperforms conventional machine learning baselines. Compared with Random Forest and linear regression models, GBMP-LCA reduces RMSE by approximately 12% and achieves an  value of 0.87, indicating strong predictive accuracy and robustness. Furthermore, model interpretability analysis reveals key trade-offs between material durability improvement and carbon footprint reduction, supporting data-driven sustainable material selection. Overall, GBMP-LCA offers an accurate, explainable, and scalable decision-support framework for sustainable building material development, with practical applicability to material screening, lifecycle-aware design, and low-carbon construction planning.