Development of framework to estimate environmental loads of PSC beam bridges based on LCA

This study aims at giving the framework to estimate the environmental load at planning and schematic phase. With increasing awareness of environmental issues, the effort to reduce the environmental impacts caused by human activity has been increasingly enlarged. So far most of researches estimating CO₂ emissions have analyzed energy consumption based on BOQ (Bills of Quantity) acquired after detailed design. There is also lack of reliability in the estimated environmental impact using the basic unit of a facility at the planning stage, because it uses a limited specific section of historical data. Thus, this study is targeted at developing framework to assess reliable environmental loads based on information available at project early phases by making case-bases from historical design information on PSC Beam Bridge. Historical database is built on the basis of the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and in order to set input information for estimating model, the literature about information in an early project phase are reviewed. Using the information available in the planning and schematic design stage, the Framework is presented to estimate the environmental load in an early stage in the project. Developing an environmental load estimation model in accordance with the Framework presented in this study, it is expected that the environmental load in the initial project phase can be estimated more quickly and accurately.