Abstract
The objective of this work is twofold: to determine the scope of the tools currently available for the assessment of sustainability of structures in Spanish legislation; and to identify environmental aspects that have yet to be covered, especially in the case of foundations and of measures aimed at the structural rehabilitation of singular buildings. To this end, the method proposed in the Spanish Instruction of Structural Concrete is applied to the particular case of the supported foundations of the Cylindrical and Colonel buildings in the construction of the new Faculties of Law and of Work Sciences, of the University of Seville during the period between 2005 and 2008. This case was chosen for its special uniqueness and for its inclusion of environmental aspects that remain outside the scope of existing methods. Most of these aspects are also of great relevance in structural rehabilitation activities carried out in urban environments and neighbourhoods, where a major surge is currently underway due to the economic crisis that has hit projects of newly constructed buildings. By virtue of the work carried out in recent years in the field of sustainability and the environment by several research groups at the University of Seville, a number of alternatives are proposed for the quantification of those aspects that remain to be considered. These techniques are based on tools that allow the agents to intervene in a flexible and effective way in the project implementation phase.
Highlights
The structures and foundations destined for civil building works and executed in concrete, steel, or a combination of both, represent the vast majority of the actions undertaken since the beginning of the last century
The main objective of this article is to determine the representativeness of the method included in the Spanish Structural Concrete Instruction (EHE-08) as regards its contribution to sustainability in the implementation of structures when applied to the particular case of singular foundations and structural rehabilitation
The results obtained after the application of the various criteria and weights included in Annex 13 (EHE-08) using the MIVES-EHE-08 V01 software tool are listed below; during the application, a number of difficulties associated with the interpretation of the criteria in the methodology have arisen and errors found
Summary
The structures and foundations destined for civil building works and executed in concrete, steel, or a combination of both, represent the vast majority of the actions undertaken since the beginning of the last century. Those structures contained in projects currently under development and projects that will be developed over the coming years are mainly carried out in concrete and steel compared to other types of materials that have been used to a much lesser extent (wood, stone, ...) and other state-of-the-art synthetic materials currently under development (fibreglass-reinforced polyester, carbon, ...) [1]. The main tools for the assessment of impacts correspond to environmental sustainability indicators, where the approaches hold different preponderance depending on the indicators or methods considered, it appears to be broadly accepted that sustainable development in any field is obtained at the confluence of the different approaches listed above [3]
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