Tracking the environmental impacts of production, use, and disposal of products (e.g., goods, and services) have been an important issue in the global economy. Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely applied method to track these environmental impacts and support policies, it has certain limitations and an isolated way of evaluating the environmental impacts with no consideration of social and economic impacts and mechanisms. To overcome the limits of current LCA, three mechanisms have been proposed in the literature: (1) broadening the indicators by including social and economic indicators in addition to the environmental impacts; (2) broadening the scope of analysis from product-level assessment to national and global levels; (3) deepening the assessment by inclusion of more mechanisms to account for interrelations among the system elements, uncertainty analysis, stakeholder involvement, etc. With these developments, LCA has been evolving into a new framework called Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). Practical application of LCSA requires integration of various methods, tools, and disciplines. In this study, a comprehensive literature review is conducted to investigate recent developments, current challenges, and future perspectives in the LCSA literature. According to the review, a high number (40%) of LCSA studies are from the environmental science discipline, while contributions from other disciplines such as economics (3%) and social sciences (9%) are very low. On broadening the scope of analysis, 58% of the studies are product-level works, while 37% quantified the impacts at national level and achieved an economy-wide analysis, and only 5% of the studies were able to quantify the global impacts of products using LCSA framework. Furthermore, current applications of LCSA have not considered the rebound effects, feedback mechanisms, and interrelations of the system of interest sufficiently. To address these challenges, we present a complete discussion about the overarching role of systems thinking to bring tools, methods and disciplines together, and provide practical examples from the earlier studies that have employed various system-based methods. We discuss the importance of integrated system-based methods for advancement of LCSA framework in the following directions: (1) regional and global level LCSA models using multi-region input-output analysis that is capable of quantitatively capturing macro-level social, environmental, and economic impacts; (2) dealing with uncertainties in LCSA during multi-criteria decision-making process and expert judgments in weighting of LCSA indicators; and (3) integration of system dynamics modeling to reveal complex interconnections, dependencies, and causal relationships between sustainability indicators.

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Systems Thinking for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: A Review of Recent Developments, Applications, and Future Perspectives

https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/18499/1/FullText.pdf

Metrics for optimising the multi-dimensional value of resources recovered from waste in a circular economy: A critical review

Robust evaluation of self-healing efficiency in cementitious materials – A review

https://ria.ua.pt/bitstream/10773/29094/3/A%20systematic%20review%20of%20life%20cycle%20sustainability%20assessment.pdf

A systematic review of life cycle sustainability assessment: Current state, methodological challenges, and implementation issues.

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/1302130.pdf

Mining the physical infrastructure: Opportunities, barriers and interventions in promoting structural components reuse

Use of digital image correlation technique in full-scale testing of prestressed concrete structures

Life cycle sustainability assessment of RC buildings in seismic regions

With the occurrence of devastating natural disasters worldwide, even though initially used interchangeably with green or environmental development, sustainability has evolved to possess social and economic implications as well. Therefore, a complete sustainability assessment of any civil infrastructure requires an evaluation of its three major components: cost, and environmental and social impacts. Because the construction industry is a pioneer in the sustainability movement, the civil engineering community at large needs an integrated methodology for conducting sustainability assessment of civil infrastructure. This paper focuses on the environmental impact assessment component of sustainability within a comprehensive framework for conducting a life-cycle assessment of structures subjected to natural hazards. Although environmental emissions and waste generation in the initial manufacturing and construction phases make significant contributions to the total environmental impact, long-term structu...

Life-Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Buildings Subjected to Natural Hazards

This paper presents an investigation of the dynamic responses on the vertical deflections and transverse stresses of the cantilever slab of a concrete box girder bridge subjected to moving traffic loads. A finite element model to analyze a three-span concrete box girder bridge is developed. A vehicle is simulated according to the HS20-44 truck design loading of AASHTO specifications and moving vehicle load is applied at various points on the cantilever part of the span along the vehicle trajectory. Full transient dynamic time history analysis is performed. The dynamic deformation and stress responses of the bridge are evaluated for different span length in a systematic approach. Span length is considered as an important parameter that influences bridge-vehicle interaction. Dynamic Amplification Factors (DAF) are evaluated at various points along the central span in terms of deflections at the tip and transverse stresses at the root of the cantilever slab. The DAFs are obtained by comparing the stress and deflection values found from dynamic analysis to the same obtained from static analysis. It has been found that the DAF is critical at the piers of the bridge. The effects of span length on DAF were found to be significant. Based on the overall findings, a Dynamic Amplification Factor of 3.0 and 4.0 can be recommended over static results for vertical deflections and transverse stresses respectively on the bridge deck.

Effect of span length on the dynamic amplification factor in the deck of concrete box girder bridges

Recent earthquakes, especially those in Chile (2010) and Christchurch (2011), have demonstrated the unexpected performance of buildings designed according modern seismic design codes. These incidents strengthen the cause for moving towards performance-based design codes rather than serviceability and strength design. This chapter deals with optimal design of RC frames, a widely used structural type around the world, considering both the initial cost and structural performance as problem objectives. Initial cost comprises the total cost of materials and workmanship for structural components, while structural performance is measured by a two-level approach. First, each design is checked for acceptability according to existing codes, and next performance is quantified in terms of maximum interstory drift obtained from nonlinear inelastic dynamic analysis. This multi-objective, multi-level approach allows one to investigate the implications of the selection of design parameters on the seismic performance while minimizing the initial cost and satisfying the design criteria. The results suggest that structural performance varies significantly within the acceptable limits of design codes and lower initial cost could be achieved for similar structural performance.

Kazi Ashfaq Hossain

Papers

Use of digital image correlation technique in full-scale testing of prestressed concrete structures

Life cycle sustainability assessment of RC buildings in seismic regions

Life-Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Buildings Subjected to Natural Hazards

Effect of span length on the dynamic amplification factor in the deck of concrete box girder bridges

Optimal Design of RC Frames Using Nonlinear Inelastic Analysis