Publications

Publication Details

Title

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AND INTEGRAL LIFE‐CYCLE ANALYSIS OF BRIDGES

Authors

Abstract

Sustainable development is a concept that is gaining increasing relevance in all areas of society. Life cycle thinking is an essential element to consider in the fulfilment of the goal of sustainability. The application of life cycle thinking to the construction sector implies to consider every stage over the life cycle – from structure’s conception to the end of its service life, and from raw material extraction to the management of building’s demolition waste. The use of such an approach at the beginning of a design process is very important in the pursuit of sustainable construction, as the potential for influencing the full life cycle performance of a construction system is very high in the early stage of design and decreases as the process develops.
However, the implementation of a life cycle approach to construction systems raises important questions such as the long period of time considered for the analysis, usually about 100 years or more, and the uncertainties and variabilities unavoidable in such analysis.
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, two main goals were pursuit in this research work: (i) the development of a comprehensive life cycle methodology, integrating environmental, economic and social criteria, for the assessment of bridge design at the early stage of its development; and (ii) the development of a decision making approach to aid in the selection amongst alternative designs of the most advantageous design in a sustainable perspective. Furthermore, in both cases, uncertainties and variabilities inherent to such analysis are addressed by means of a probabilistic approach.
The general framework of the proposed integral approach is based on the standardized framework for Life Cycle Environmental Analysis provided by the series of ISO standards 14040. This approach allows to identify the stages and relative processes leading to higher environmental, economical and social impacts over the bridge life cycle. Furthermore, the identification of the most critical processes allows to act upon these processes in order to minimize the corresponding impacts.
The developed decision making methodology is based on the framework described in the previous paragraph, although a multi‐criteria approach is added in order to enable the comparison between alternative bridge designs. This approach may be used to assess different alternative designs and to select the best solution, offering the best score in a balance between environmental, economic and social criteria. Therefore, the multi‐criteria decision approach fulfils a dual purpose: (i) to aid the bridge designer in deciding whether the options he/she is taking are the ones that will lead the solution towards an efficiency design in the context of a sustainable construction system; and (ii) in the context of green public procurement, to provide an approach that enables the comparison of alternative bridge designs and the selection of the best alternative in relation to the most economically advantageous tender award criterion.
The proposed integral methodology is applied to three case studies: a composite steel‐concrete bridge, a precast concrete bridge and a cast “in situ” concrete bridge. Then, the three case studies are compared based on the proposed multi‐criteria approach. Finally, based on the results and comparison of the case studies, design recommendations are prescribed to help design teams to produce efficient bridges in the context of a sustainable construction system.

References

[12.33] Benetto, E., Dujet, C. and Rousseaux, P. 2008. Integrating fuzzy multicriteria analysis and uncertainty evaluation in life cycle assessment. Environmental modelling & software 23, pp. 1461‐ 1467.
[12.34] Le Téno, J. and Mareschal, B. 1998. An interval version of PROMETHEE for the comparison of building products’ design with ill‐defined data on environmental quality. European Journal of Operational Research 109, pp. 522‐529.
[12.35] Geldermann, J., Spengler, T. And Rentz, O. 2000. Fuzzy outranking for environmental assessment. Case study: iron and steel making industry. Fuzzy sets ans systems 115, pp. 45‐65.
[12.36] Hanandeh, A. and El‐Zein, A. 2010. The development and application of multi‐criteria decision‐ making tool with consideration of uncertainty: The selection of a management strategy for the bio‐ degradable fraction in the municipal solid waste. Bioresource Technology Volume 101, Issue 2, pp. 555‐561.
[12.37] Hyde, K., Maier, H. and Colby, C. 2003. Incorporating uncertainty in the PROMETHEE MCDA method. Journal of multi‐criteria decision analysis 12, pp 245‐259.
[12.38] Dorini, G., Kapelan, Z. And Azapagic, A. 2010. Managing uncertainty in multiple‐criteria decision making related to sustainability assessment. Clean Technologies Environmental Policy. Online ISSN 1618‐9558.
[12.39] Salminen, P., Hokkanen, J. and Lahdelma, R. 1998. Comparing multicriteria methods in the context of environmental problems. European Journal of Operational Research 104, pp. 485‐496.
[12.40] Brans, J.P. 1982. L’ingénièrie de la décision; Elaboration d’instruments d’aide à la décision. La méthode PROMETHEE. In R. Nadeau and M. Landry, editors, L’aide à la décision: Nature, Instruments et Perspectives d’Avenir, pages 183–213, Québec, Canada. Presses de l’Université Laval.
[12.41] Vincke, J. and Brans, P. 1985. A preference ranking organization method. The PROMETHEE method for MCDM. Management Science 31, pp. 641–656.
[12.42] Brans, J., Vincke, P. and Mareschal, B. 1986. How to select and how to rank projects: The PROMETHEE method. European Journal of Operational Research 24 (2),pp. 228–238.
[12.43] Behzadian, M., Kazemzadeh, R., Albadvi, A. and Aghdasi, M. 2010. PROMETHEE: A comprehensive literature review on methodologies and applications. European Journal of Operational Research 200, pp. 198–215.
[12.44] Brans, J. and Mareschal, B. 2005. PROMETHEE methods, pp. 163–195, Chapter of book. In: Figueira, J., Greco, S., Ehrgott, M., (Eds.), Multiple Criteria Analysis – State of the Art Surveys, vol. 78, International Series in Operations Research and Management Sciences. Springer, New York, USA.
[12.45] Figueira, J., Greco, S., Ehrgott, M. (Eds) 2005. Multiple criteria decision analysis: State of the art surveys. Springer.
[12.46] Palisade. 2009. @Risk ‐ Risk Analysis and Simulation Add‐In for Microsoft Excel 5.5 (student version).
[A.1] Lei no. 24/2007 de 18 de Julho ‐ Define direitos dos utentes nas vias rodoviárias classificadas como auto ‐estradas concessionadas, itinerários principais e itinerários complementares (in Portuguese).
[A.2] Decreto Regulamentar n.o 12/2008 de 9 de Junho ‐ Regula a Lei n.o 24/2007, de 18 de Junho (in Portuguese).

Files

2010_phd_Gervasio_Helena.pdf

<< back