###### Abstract  
Life-cycle cost assessment has gained increasing relevance across sectors related to urban and building development. In real estate and public procurement decision-making, it offers a comprehensive view of property costs beyond the initial investment, which aligns with European Sustainable Development policies and new taxonomies in sustainable investment. Life-cycle cost assessment supports sustainable design decisions by integrating multiple perspectives and methodologies, including Whole Life Costing and Net Present Value calculations. This approach enables a comprehensive evaluation of long-term costs and benefits, assessing their impact on economic viability and profitability throughout the investment life cycle. However, several challenges persist in standardizing methodologies, developing comprehensive data inventories, and ensuring consistency in result interpretation. The absence of universally accepted frameworks and guidelines introduces additional limitations for practitioners, including estimation inaccuracies, biased assessments, unreliable probability judgments, and the neglect of indirect consequences in decision-making. This review particularly emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary research to advance the integration of costs and benefits of externalities and intangibles associated with social and environmental criteria. life-cycle assessment; data-driven decision-making; sustainable development; cost-benefit assessment; externalities; intangible value +
Footnote †: journal: _Sustainability_  
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initiatives from the European Commission, such as the development of conceptual frameworks to regulate the sustainability of economic activities through the EU Taxonomy [6] and the establishment of criteria for sustainable buildings throughout the Level(s) Framework [7], have driven changes in management models and decision-making processes across both public and private sectors. These shifts have also been formalized through new regulatory requirements in the EU 27 + UK, including regulations and delegate acts linked to the Green Public Procurement Guidelines [8] and the directives and regulations affecting the building industry, playing a major role in the fields of environmental, social, and economic sustainability [9]. From the previously outlined perspective, the efficient management of limited resources, including financial resources, for the achievement of diverse objectives is intrinsically connected to the principles of circular economy and sustainable development. As a pertinent example in this context, the successful implementation of energy efficiency regulations in several Western countries may have been facilitated by the anticipated reductions in operation and maintenance costs projected by public authorities. This, in turn, has led to the development of new methods for assessing public investment over the life cycle, with life-cycle cost assessment emerging as an initial approach [10; 11; 12]. Nowadays, these efforts are further enhanced with the implementation of the \"adaptative reuse\" of buildings as a common practice to reduce the obsolescence of the building stock, improving the material circularity of the built environment and the cost-effective consumption of resources. Regarding the later joint political action of EU member states in the field of life-cycle cost assessment (LCC), various projects and research initiatives were undertaken at the beginning of the 21 st century aimed at developing probabilistic methods to support the prediction of life-cycle costs and the performance of buildings and civil infrastructure. Among these initiatives, EuroLifeForm stood out by introducing not only probabilistic life-cycle cost models but also deterioration models, decision support applications, and a basic framework for environmental impact analysis [13].