Sustainability assessment of demolition based on quantitative external costs

Rapid urbanization brings us challenges, but it is meant to bring us well‐being. The short lifetime of buildings and urban renewal policies have led to the demand for demolition. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the benefits of implementing an advanced demolition system and to fill the sustainability assessment gap in the demolition sector. This approach will help reduce obstacles to conducting sustainable demolition. To achieve this goal, an assessment system based on external costs was built, which mainly focused on the costs of damage due to global warming and environmental pollution. A case study employing two advanced demolition systems was used to show how the assessment works and the effects of demolition. According to the assessment results, the total external damage for the two advanced demolition systems is 37.6% and 19.6% of that of the conventional demolition method. Excellent waste management causes damage due to global warming in only 9.4% of conventional demolition projects, but noise impacts are still a crucial issue in the demolition field, as they contribute to 74.4% of the total damage. Based on the case study results, the benefits of sustainable demolition and the future of demolition are revealed. Further development should be sought for future demolition through new design theory or new technology.