Sustainability Assessment of Bridge Systems: An Emergy-based Lifecycle Analysis (EM-LCA)

摘要

Construction of civil infrastructure systems has become one of the fastest growing industries that significantly contribute to the depletion of non-renewable resources, waste generation, high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Effective infrastructure management and principles of sustainable development can help to find an optimal compromise between economic growth and environmental protection for all stakeholders. In recent years, numerous attempts have been made to identify, address, and reduce environmental and associated socioeconomic impacts over the lifecycle of an infrastructure system. This paper discusses a comprehensive Emergy based evaluation system based on sustainability criteria - i.e. Environment, economics, and social also referred as triple-bottom-lines (TBL). Emergy can be defined as the energy of one type (usually solar energy) that is required to generate a resource, product, service, or activity. An integrated framework based on Emergy accounting has been proposed to perform lifecycle analysis systematically. The main objective of the proposed Emergy-based Lifecycle Analysis (EM-LCA) framework is to evaluate Emergy consumption/production of a bridge considering TBL impacts.