Moving towards the standardization of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment in the context of the environmental impact regulation of steel structures

Abstract

In the construction sector, a standardised approach to assessing the environmental impact of entire assets or operations remains lacking. A key challenge lies in evaluating the environmental footprint of structures while balancing comprehensive analysis with a user-friendly output that fits within the complex and multi-criteria structural management decision-making framework. The need of standardisation of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) is demonstrated in this paper and a proposal is brough forth encompassing the full spectrum of environmental impacts, rather than focusing on a narrow range (e.g., global warming), which may overlook other significant effects. The importance of incorporating normalisation processes is emphasised, along with the use of software tools that account for both primary and secondary construction materials and operations. A demonstrative LCA on a case study steel structure is reported to illustrate the proposed approach.

The research published herein is part of the RE-STEEL Project (PID2022–140178OB-I00), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain.

Peer Reviewed

Postprint (published version)