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Sustainable design and integral life-cycle analysis of bridges

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Abstract

Sustainable development is an issue that is gaining relevance in all areas of society. In order to move towards the goal of sustainability, life cycle thinking is an essential element. The implementation of life cycle approaches to construction systems raises important questions such as the long period of time considered for the analysis, usually about 100 years or more. Moreover, the multi-dimensional concept of sustainability implies the simultaneous consideration of environmental, economical and social criteria. Whilst the framework for the evaluation of the environmental criterion is currently well established in standards and other scientific documents, the economical and social criteria are at a much earlier stage of development. Therefore, the primary aim of this thesis is the development of a comprehensive life cycle approach, integrating environmental, economic and social criteria, to aid engineers throughout the design process of civil engineering infrastructures in the pursuit of a sustainable design.
Chapter 1 provides a short introduction to the holistic concepts of Sustainable Development and Sustainable construction. Chapter 2 describes the political and normative frameworks of the strategies implemented by institutions and organizations in order to pursuit the goals of sustainable development, in particular, in relation to the construction sector.
Chapter 3 provides a review of current methodologies for the assessment of the sustainability of products, in general, and of construction systems, in particular. This chapter highlights the fact that most methodologies have been developed taking into account only one criterion and not an integrated approach as required by the multi-dimensional concept of sustainability.
To measure the environmental, economical and social performance of bridges, indicators are selected in Chapter 4, after a short review of existing indicators. The selection of indicators takes into account the impacts of bridges over its complete life cycle, from raw material acquisition to demolition and deposition of waste.
Chapter 5 introduces the general framework for life cycle assessment integrating the environmental, economical and social criteria. This general approach is based on the well established methodology for life cycle environmental analysis according to ISO standards. Moreover, this chapter develops the base requirements and assumptions that are needed for the quantification of the three criteria: goal and scope of the analysis, criteria for data quality and collection, allocation rules, etc.
The quantification of the environmental, economical and social criteria over the life cycle of bridges is made in separate chapters. Thus, Chapters 6, 7 and 8 correspond to each of the aforementioned criteria, respectively. Each chapter introduces the quantification method used in each case and discusses the main problems encountered in the adaptation of the general framework.
Chapters 9, 10 and 11 elaborate case studies, respectively, a composite steel-concrete bridge, a precast concrete bridge and a concrete bridge cast “in situ”. Detailed life cycle results are presented and discussed, and the aforementioned method is demonstrated and validated.
Chapter 12 reviews available methodologies for multi-criteria analysis in the context of decision making and discusses the best approaches for the integration of the developed criteria.
The thesis concludes with some concise recommendations for future research and development activities in relation to the use of integral life cycle approaches.

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