Environmental Impact Assessment for the Production of Aggregates Used in the Construction Industry by Using MCDA

Abstract

AbstractThe need for addressing the environmental issues related to the production of aggregates for use in construction purposes cannot be ignored especially considering the amount of aggregates needed particularly to produce asphaltic and cemented concrete to meet the requirements for infrastructure construction to accommodate societal demand. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods have been an efficient tool to evaluate the environmental burdens of manufacturing aggregates. Mostly, the LCA results have been interpreted individually by considering certain criteria in the environmental impact assessment. Herein, a multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was employed by using the Fuzzy-PROMETHEE technique to evaluate the impact of producing aggregates to the environment based on multiple criteria. According to the LCA results, manufacturing of different types of aggregates has certain positive and negative aspects compared to other alternatives in terms of environmental impact and the direction of environmental effect have varied based on the particular criteria. The MCDA study conducted in this study assisted in ranking the most preferable sources of aggregates and their manufacturing process by considering the complete set of environmental impact indicators. Based on the Fuzzy-PROMETHEE results it was observed that, the manufacturing of recycled aggregates has the least environmental impact while the highest environmental impact was observed for the marine aggregates production.KeywordsLife cycle assessmentMultiple criteria decision analysisFuzzy-PROMETHEEMineral aggregatesEnvironmental impact assessment