Life cycle assessment based environmental impact estimation model for pre-stressed concrete beam bridge in the early design phase

Abstract

The late rise in global concern for environmental issues such as global warming and air pollution is accentuating the need for environmental assessments in the construction industry. Promptly evaluating the environmental loads of the various design alternatives during the early stages of a construction project and adopting the most environmentally sustainable candidate is therefore of large importance. Yet, research on the early evaluation of a construction project's environmental load in order to aid the decision making process is hitherto lacking. In light of this dilemma, this study proposes a model for estimating the environmental load by employing only the most basic information accessible during the early design phases of a project for the pre-stressed concrete (PSC) beam bridge, the most common bridge structure. Firstly, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on the data from 99 bridges by integrating the bills of quantities (BOQ) with a life cycle inventory (LCI) database. The processed data was then utilized to construct a case based reasoning (CBR) model for estimating the environmental load. The accuracy of the estimation model was then validated using five test cases; the model's mean absolute error rates (MAER) for the total environmental load was calculated as 7.09%. Such test results were shown to be superior compared to those obtained from a multiple-regression based model and a slab area base-unit analysis model. Henceforth application of this model during the early stages of a project is expected to highly complement environmentally friendly designs and construction by facilitating the swift evaluation of the environmental load from multiple standpoints.