A Bridge Sustainability Assessment Framework

摘要

Canadas severely deteriorated infrastructure requires hundreds of billions of dollars to be upgraded to an acceptable level; however, consideration of sustainability and asset durability over its service life is seriously lacking. To increase awareness and to establish a dialogue amongst engineers, politi- cians and the public, a holistic sustainability assessment framework for new and existing bridges was developed. While some commercial systems are available for the sustainability assessment of building systems, they are not directly applicable to bridges, which are different in their structural details and life-cycle performance and needs. Most of the existing bridge sustainability assessment programs focus mainly on structural aspects, with little or no attention paid to economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability.