Prolca—treatment of uncertainty in infrastructure LCA
2019 (English)In: Life-Cycle Analysis and Assessment in Civil Engineering: Towards an Integrated Vision - Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering, IALCCE 2018, CRC Press/Balkema , 2019, p. 2923-2930Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
The construction, operation and maintenance of transportation infrastructure require energy and materials which impact the environment. Large infrastructure projects thus use resources intensively and leave a significant environmental footprint. To demonstrate and support the sustainability of such large-scale projects, life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a common tool to evaluate environmental impacts in all stages of infrastructure life cycle, from raw material production through end-of-life management. However, the various phases of the assessment are all associated with uncertainties. If decisions are made without consideration of these uncertainties, they might be misleading and suboptimal. In this paper, results are presentedwhere variations associated with different parameters and tools for life cycle assessment have been considered using probabilistic methods. A categorization of common uncertainties in LCA is also included. The most influential parameters can be identified with sensitivity analysis methods, since for LCA with a large number of parameters it may be unreasonable to incorporate all in a probabilistic simulation. For a limited amount of influential variables, Monte Carlo simulation has been used to assess the effects of uncertainties on the results.A bridge has been used as a case study to find important aspects in infrastructure LCA. The results indicate that if the most influential parameters are considered as random variables, it is possible to estimate the uncertainty and increase the validity of the life cycle assessment.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
CRC Press/Balkema , 2019. p. 2923-2930
Keywords [en]
Bridges, Environmental impact, Intelligent systems, Materials handling, Monte Carlo methods, Sensitivity analysis, Sustainable development, Uncertainty analysis, End of life managements, Environmental footprints, Infrastructure project, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Operation and maintenance, Probabilistic simulation, Raw material production, Transportation infrastructures, Life cycle
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-38467Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85063939612ISBN: 9781138626331 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-38467DiVA, id: diva2:1314926
Conference
6th International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering, IALCCE 2018, 28 October 2018 through 31 October 2018
2019-05-102019-05-102023-05-16Bibliographically approved