1. business and industrial
2. construction

Life-Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment of Reinforced
Concrete Buildings Subjected to Natural Hazards
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Kazi Ashfaq Hossain1 and Bora Gencturk, A.M.ASCE2
Abstract: With the occurrence of devastating natural disasters worldwide, even though initially used interchangeably with green or environmental development, sustainability has evolved to possess social and economic implications as well. Therefore, a complete sustainability assessment of any civil infrastructure requires an evaluation of its three major components: cost, and environmental and social impacts. Because
the construction industry is a pioneer in the sustainability movement, the civil engineering community at large needs an integrated methodology
for conducting sustainability assessment of civil infrastructure. This paper focuses on the environmental impact assessment component of sustainability within a comprehensive framework for conducting a life-cycle assessment of structures subjected to natural hazards. Although environmental emissions and waste generation in the initial manufacturing and construction phases make significant contributions to the total
environmental impact, long-term structural performance (including damage resulting from natural hazards) plays an important role in the sustainability of a structure. The damage experienced by a structure in future natural hazards might substantially increase the total environmental
impact because of repair activities. In this paper, a life-cycle environmental impact assessment methodology is proposed with specific emphasis
on RC buildings subjected to earthquakes. The methodology is applied to a RC building, and the results confirm the importance of the lifecycle environmental impact assessment as an essential component of sustainability in the presence of seismic threats. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)
AE.1943-5568.0000153. © 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Sustainability; Environmental impact assessment; RC buildings; Performance-based earthquake engineering
methodology.
Introduction
The term sustainability is commonly perceived by civil engineers
as ensuring sustainable sites and water efficiency, minimizing energy and materials, improving environmental quality, and applying
innovation in the design process (U.S. Green Building Council 2009).
The sustainability movement in the construction industry is mainly
motivated by the fact that construction activities produce a considerable amount of harmful effluents and emissions that contribute
to environmental pollution (Orabi et al. 2012). In addition, all
construction projects lead to high consumption of raw materials
and nonrenewable energy (Matos and Wagner 1998) and generation
of a significant amount of debris from demolition activities (EPA
2000, 2004). Thousands of new construction projects result in increased environmental and economic impacts on society, which can
be minimized through the implementation of sustainability initiatives. At the same time, incidents, such as the 2011 Tohoku
Earthquake in Japan and the 2012 Hurricane Sandy in the United
States, highlight the importance of incorporating disaster resilience
into sustainable design practices. Therefore, it is a necessity to find a
compromise between green building design and structural resilience in
hazard-prone regions, which often happen to be conflicting objectives.
1
Research Assistant, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Univ. of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-4003.
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Univ. of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-4003 (corresponding author).
E-mail: [email protected]
Note. This manuscript was submitted on April 1, 2013; approved on
March 11, 2014; published online on April 15, 2014. Discussion period open
until September 15, 2014; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Architectural
Engineering, © ASCE, ISSN 1076-0431/A4014001(12)/$25.00.
© ASCE
The adoption of effective disaster-resilient and sustainable
practices requires an explicit and comprehensive sustainability assessment framework. In other words, sustainability needs to be
properly represented in terms of quantifiable units to allow for comparisons and trade-offs among alternative designs. Quantifying the
sustainability of buildings is significantly more difficult than quantifying the sustainability of other products or processes for reasons such
as the presence of multiple materials, complicated manufacturing and
construction processes, complex and changing functionalities, long
product design lives in contrast with limited service lives of the
components, constant interaction with users and the environment,
nonstandardized processes, and insufficient data. Although sustainability was initially concerned mostly with the environment, the
term has evolved to encompass three interdependent factors: society,
economy, and environment. In a sustainable system, economic, social, and environmental impacts are balanced, which is also known as
the triple bottom line framework (Willard 2002). Therefore, quantifying sustainability requires a complete and systematic assessment
of these three subcomponents, and a framework should be developed
that takes into account the entire life span of the building.
All structural systems undergo distinct life cycles comprising
several stages, such as material production, construction, operation or
use, and disposal. As a result, the life-cycle assessment (LCA), which
was originally developed to measure the sustainability of products or
processes [Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC)
2006], has become popular among researchers and designers for
conducting a sustainability evaluation of buildings. Several LCA
studies have been performed over the years to measure environmental impacts using different boundary conditions, types of emissions, and environmental impact categories; a complete review of
these can be found in Khasreen et al. (2009) and Sharma et al. (2011).
Most of the past LCA studies did not take into consideration the
damage caused by natural hazards, which could have a significant
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effect on the total lifetime environmental impact (Björklund et al.
1996; Jönsson et al. 1998; Guggemos 2003; Junnila and Horvath
2003; Scheuer et al. 2003; Johnson 2006). Such an assessment
requires the evaluation of lifetime structural performance. On the
other hand, some studies have recently been conducted on the environmental loss assessment of structures under seismic hazards. For
example, Arroyo et al. (2012) introduced environmental loss within
a seismic structural design. The Applied Technology Council (ATC)
has developed a methodology for assessing environmental impacts
associated with seismic damage (Court et al. 2012). Time-variant
sustainability assessments have also been performed under multiple
hazards, such as simultaneous earthquake and deterioration, and the
results have been presented in terms of energy consumption and
environmental emissions (Tapia and Padgett 2012; Dong et al.
2013). However, a comprehensive methodology that relates the
seismic structural response and structural damage to the environmental losses or impacts has not yet been developed.
The first goal of this study is to develop a comprehensive
framework for a LCA of RC buildings with due consideration
given to three primary components: cost, environmental impacts,
and social impacts. The second goal is to use this framework to
evaluate the environmental impacts resulting from seismic damage
repair of the structural components of buildings and thereby use the
quantifiable total environmental impact in selecting a more sustainable design. The main contribution of the paper is that the
authors have developed an approach that converts structural damage
caused by natural hazards to quantifiable environmental impacts by
using a probabilistic analysis for a more transparent sustainability
assessment. The methodology is further extended to incorporate
structural optimization for a comparative analysis of alternative optimal structural designs. As an example, a life-cycle environmental
impact assessment (LCEIA) of a RC building located in a highseismic region is performed using the proposed methodology.
Sustainability Assessment Framework
A comprehensive framework for conducting a sustainability assessment of structures subjected to natural hazards is introduced in this
section. Economic impacts are the results of the monetary losses
incurred during different life-cycle phases of the structure, whereas
environmental impacts take into account environmental inputs
(resources and energy) and outputs (emissions and wastes). Examples of social impacts are deaths and injuries. The LCA framework
outlined in Fig. 1 is proposed for a seismic sustainability assessment
of typical RC buildings. This framework merges all three sustainability factors by adopting three interactive functions: life-cycle cost
assessment (LCCA), life-cycle structural performance assessment
(LCSPA), and LCEIA. Each of these components comprises various
subcomponents, which are briefly described in the following sections. To functionalize this framework, inventories are first made of
resources, energy, and monetary inputs, and then the LCSPA, LCCA,
and LCEIA are performed to obtain the outputs (i.e., the impact
quantities). Finally, the environmental, social, and economic impacts
are assessed to assist decision makers in considering trade-offs between alternative designs.
Life-Cycle Phases
The RC buildings undergo a number of life-cycle phases, such as raw
material extraction, material production, construction, use, and end
of life. The material production phase includes transporting raw
materials to the manufacturing plants, manufacturing the materials,
and storing the finished materials. The construction phase consists
© ASCE
of activities such as transporting the finished materials and other
products to the project site, fabricating the structure on site, and
using construction equipment and tools. The use phase includes all
the activities that occur during the service life of the building, including operation, maintenance, repair, replacement, and retrofitting. The activities in the end-of-life phase of a building are demolition
of the building, transportation of building debris to the sorting
plant, sorting, transportation of the sorted debris to the recycling plant
or disposal site, recycling the recyclable materials, and disposal
of nonrecyclable materials to the landfill site.
Sustainability Assessment Functions
Among the three LCA functions, the LCSPA is a precursor of the LCCA
and LCEIA because the resilience of the structure directly affects both
the life-cycle cost and life-cycle environmental impact. The structural
damage predicted from the LCSPA helps in selecting the repair or retrofitting schemes, therefore influencing the repair cost and environmental load by the repair activity. However, the details of the LCCA
are not included here because an LCCA is not directly related to
the objectives of this paper. In addition to the repair cost, structural damage results in indirect losses, such as the loss of rental income, inconvenience, and potential loss of lessors. These indirect costs may vary
substantially depending on the location and use of the structure, although evaluation of these costs is outside the scope of this study. The
LCSPA can also be used to quantify certain social impacts, such as death
toll and number of injuries, which the authors are currently studying.
A general structural performance assessment for RC buildings
involves investigating the effects of all sources that result in deterioration of the intended use. These sources include aging-induced
deterioration along with structural and nonstructural damage from
manufactured and natural hazards. The focus here is solely on the
structural damage incurred by future earthquakes. Earthquake hazards
are properly modeled when they account for different magnitudes
and return periods. To assess structural performance in response to
a seismic hazard, several performance metrics, such as stress, strain,
deformation, and length of the plastic hinges, are obtained by conducting a nonlinear structural analysis. These quantitative measures
are eventually used to assess the probable damage state (DS) of the
building elements, which is characterized by the type and extent of
cracking, spalling, or crushing of concrete and the yielding, buckling,
or rupture of the steel reinforcements (Elnashai and Di Sarno 2008).
A LCEIA, which is the focus of this paper, is performed to
evaluate the environmental loads at different life-cycle stages.
First, the consumption of raw materials and energy, and emissions of
by-products, are listed for each activity through an input-output diagram. Next, the input-output flow of the entire product or process is
obtained. These flows are represented in terms of functional units.
Appropriate boundary conditions are used to define the scope of the
study. Resource depletion or emission results are then classified
based on their potential impact on the environment. Each emission
result is characterized according to its contribution to the impact
category in question. Finally, the environmental impact of a particular stage or the entire product is obtained by adding weighted values. The life-cycle impact is represented by an environmental
impact indicator through the normalization of individual impact
categories. The environmental impact indicator is then used to
compare the environmental performance of alternative designs. The
detailed methodology is described in the following section.
The LCEIA for a RC Building
This section discusses in detail the LCEIA function of the proposed
framework for sustainability. Traditionally, a LCA has been
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Fig. 1. Proposed LCA framework for RC buildings
defined as an integrated tool that provides a quantifiable investigation and evaluation of the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service associated with all the life-cycle phases
(SAIC 2006). The methodology used here is organized around the
concept of environmental impact quantification proposed by ISO
14040 (ISO 2006a). The ISO guidelines are presented in two
documents: ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 (ISO 2006a, b). Because
other sustainability components are incorporated in the proposed
LCA framework to avoid confusion, the term LCA presented in the
ISO documents corresponds in this paper to LCEIA only and not to
the entire LCA framework. The general LCEIA as outlined in the ISO
documents can be divided into four interacting stages: goal and scope
definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation
as depicted in Fig. 2 and discussed in the “Goal and Scope Definition
for the LCEIA” section.
Goal and Scope Definition for the LCEIA
The goal and scope definition, as defined in ISO 14040 and ISO
14044 (ISO 2006a, b), is the first phase of the LCEIA. It involves
identifying the product or process being analyzed and developing
plans for conducting the assessment. The goal and scope mentioned
here are not to be confused with the goal and scope of this paper. The
goal summarizes the reasons for conducting the study, the expected
application of the outcome, and the prospective users and audiences
of the study and is previously described. The scope provides ways of
© ASCE
Fig. 2. LCA according to ISO 14040 (data from ISO 2006b)
achieving the intended goals by defining a functional unit, system
boundaries, and impact assessment methodology. The functional
unit is the functional equivalence or quantitative reference of a
product or process, which can be used as a basis for comparison
of similar products or services. Generally, the functional unit for
a building is taken as the total usable floor area or the amount of
material used for construction. Here, the scope of a LCEIA has
been limited to the structural components of the total building
(i.e., functional unit).
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The system boundary includes or excludes different life-cycle
stages and their subunits, depending on their relevance to the study
outcome. For example, if the objective of the study is to optimize
construction practices, then the use or operation phase might be excluded from the system boundary. The data required for subsequent
steps are also defined in the goal and scope definition stage. Here, the
system boundaries (Fig. 3) are defined as cradle to grave, excluding
operation and maintenance, which are not directly affected from
the structural performance of a building under an earthquake. The
extraction of raw materials is considered the starting point, whereas
the boundary ends with recycling the recyclable materials (i.e., steel
and coarse aggregates) and disposal of the remaining materials
(i.e., fine debris). Because our study focuses on only the structural
aspects of buildings, the contribution of the nonstructural elements is
not taken into consideration within the system boundary. Operation
(i.e., energy used during the service life), although contributing to
a significant portion of the total environmental impact, will produce
the same amount of impact for alternative structural designs; hence,
it is also excluded. The periodic maintenance is not taken into
consideration because environmental deterioration is expected to
be more or less independent of the structural design and seismic
performance of the building. Therefore, the probabilistic structural
assessment methodology makes an intrinsic assumption that the
structure will be in pristine condition throughout its lifetime when
an earthquake hits.
Given the system boundary previously described, the data required
for conducting this study are the material consumption, energy
(i.e., fossil fuel and electricity) used, and environmental emissions corresponding to each life-cycle stage previously defined. No single database of environmental impacts includes all the relevant information for
environmental impacts; therefore, several databases are merged here,
as described in the “Environmental Inventory Development” section.
Environmental Inventory Development
In this step, inflow and outflow data are collected that correspond
to different processes of the life-cycle stages within the system
boundary. Inflow typically involves the consumption of energy and
raw materials, whereas outflow consists of environmental emissions to the land, water, and atmosphere. The life-cycle stages are
subdivided into processes. The flow of raw materials and partially
finished products from one unit of the process to the subsequent unit
is also considered during the inventory development. The inventory
for material manufacturing, construction processes, repair activities, and end-of-life phases for a particular study is sometimes
presented in terms of functional units different from the ones defined in the goal and scope. For example, the inventory for material
production is usually represented in terms of the total volume or
weight of the finished material. On the other hand, the inventory for
concrete crack repair activity is more closely related to the surface
area of the cracked region. Therefore, the inventories of individual
processes need to be normalized and validated for the functional unit
of the final product. The outcome of an inventory analysis is a lifecycle inventory, which lists the environmental input-output flows of
the various life-cycle activities.
In this study, a structural design is first performed based on
regulatory documents (i.e., building design codes), and the material quantities required to construct the building are assessed.
Next, an inventory is constructed of all the inputs and outputs
for each process. For material manufacture and construction, the
Fig. 3. Life-cycle phases and selected system boundary
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Berkeley Lab Building Materials Pathways (B-PATH) spreadsheets
developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Masanet et al.
2012) are used. This database provides complete life-cycle inventories
for the production of concrete and steel and for on-site construction
activities, such as the placing of concrete and fabrication of rebar and
formwork. The inventory for the end-of-life phase is obtained from
the EcoInvent 2.0 database (Frischknecht et al. 2007), which consists
of demolition, sorting, disposal, and recycling activities. Transportation distances between different units of the production, construction, and end-of-life phases are determined based on realistic
assumptions.
During the inventory development, it was assumed that 70% of
the raw materials used for rebar fabrication come from recovered
scrap steel. The recovery and recycling process produces environmental emissions. In contrast, material recovery reduces the
consumption of virgin raw materials, resulting in positive environmental performance. Because the database incorporates environmental emissions and resource recovery in the material production
phase, recycling of steel is not included separately in the end-of-life
phase. It is assumed that after demolition, building debris is transported to the sorting plant, which is the usual case for RC buildings.
Steel and coarse particles are sent for recycling, and fine particles are
deposited in landfills. The Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database provided by the U.S. EPA (2006) is used to obtain
emissions resulting from electricity production.
Impact Assessment
In the impact assessment step, the authors introduce environmental
impacts to evaluate the potential hazardous effects of emissions and
resource consumption on the ecosystem and human health globally
or locally. The inventory inputs and outputs are processed to translate
the resources and releases to environmental impacts by incorporating
the classification, characterization, normalization, and weighting
steps. First, resources or emissions that contribute to the same environmental impact category are grouped. The impact categories
proposed by EPA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
National Institutes of Health, and Building for Environmental and
Economic Sustainability (BEES) are taken into consideration as
listed in Table 1. Each inventory flow has a different relative contribution to the impact categories. The characterization factors recommended by the EPA in the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment
of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) is used for
converting input-output flows into impact categories (Bare 2011).
For example, greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane,
contribute to global warming; hence, they are classified under the
global warming potential impact category. Again, methane has 23
times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide, which is
taken into consideration by using an appropriate characterization
factor. Similar relationships are used for other impact categories,
which are omitted from Table 1 for brevity.
The mathematical formulation used to quantify impacts based
on inventory modeling is adapted from Bare and Gloria (2006). The
site-specific potential impact, I, of all chemicals, x, for a specific impact category, i, is
I¼
PPP
s
x
m
i
i
Fxms
Pixms Mxms
(1)
i
i
, Pixms , and Mxms
5 fate, potency, and mass of chemical
where Fxms
x emitted to media m at site s. For generalized non site-specific
categories, characterization factors are used instead of the fate and
potency factors.
The environmental impact can be represented in terms of a single
index, which takes into account the effect of all impact categories.
Because different impact categories are expressed in terms of various emission equivalents, the impacts need to be normalized and
weighted before they can be translated into a performance index as
the last step. In line with TRACI, normalization data for impact
categories were proposed by the EPA (Bare 2011). The normalized
impacts are comparable because they are dimensionless and have a
common basis in terms of environmental flows in the United States
per year per capita. The BEES recommends converting normalized
impacts into an environmental performance score (EPS) (Lippiatt
2007). To obtain an EPS, weighting factors are selected based on the
relative importance of the impact categories on the long-term and
short-term environmental effects. Here, the purpose of using a single
index is to simplify the LCEIA output and make equivalent designs
easily comparable, therefore aiding the decision-making process.
Some of the impact categories, such as fossil fuel depletion and water
intake, are not available in TRACI; therefore, the weighting factors
recommended by BEES for the remaining categories are modified
by multiplying by a constant value of 1.36. This modification is done
so that the sum of weighting factors becomes equal to 100 as shown
in Table 2.
The cradle-to-grave LCEIA considers the interaction between the
structure and environment at all life-cycle stages. As previously described, when the environmental inventory is used, these interactions
Table 1. Characterization of Life-Cycle Inventory Data (Data from Bare 2011)
Global warming potential
Carbon dioxide (CO2 , net)
Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4 )
Carbon tetrafluoride (CF4 )
Dichlorodifluoromethane, Freon-12
(CCl2 F2 )
Chloroform (CHCl3 , HC-20)
Halon 1301 (CF3 Br)
Difluoromonochloromethane (CHF2 Cl)
Methane (CH4 )
Methyl bromide (CH3 Br)
Methyl chloride (CH3 Cl)
Methylene chloride (CH2 Cl2 , HC-130)
Nitrous oxide (N2 O)
Trichloroethane (1,1, 1e CH3 CCl3 )
Note: eq. 5 equivalent.
© ASCE
CO2 (kg eq.)
1
1,800
5,700
10,600
30
6,900
1,700
23
5
16
10
296
140
Acidification potential
H1 (kg eq.)
Eutrophication potential
N (kg eq.)
Ammonia (NH)
Hydrogen chloride (HCl)
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)
Hydrogen fluoride (HF)
95.49
44.7
60.4
81.26
Ammonia (NH3 )
Nitrogen oxides (NOx as NO2 )
Nitrous oxide (N2 O)
Phosphorus to air (P)
0.12
0.04
0.09
1.12
Hydrogen sulfide (H2 S)
Nitrogen oxides (NOx as NO2 )
Sulfur oxides (SOx as SO2 )
Sulfuric acid (H2 SO4 )
—
—
—
95.9
40.04
50.79
33.3
—
—
—
0.99
0.05
0.05
0.24
0.32
0.99
7.29
—
—
—
—
Ammonia (NH1
4 , NH3 , as N)
Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5)
Chemical oxygen demand (COD)
Nitrate (NOe
3)
Nitrite (NOe
2)
Nitrogenous matter (unspecified, as N)
2e
e
Phosphates (PO3e
4 , HPO4 , H2 PO4 ,
H3 PO4 , as P)
Phosphorus to water (P)
—
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—
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Table 2. Normalization Values and Weighting Factors
Weighting factor
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Impact category
Normalization value
a
BEES
This study
29.3
Global warming
25,582,640.09g CO2 equivalents
Fossil fuel depletion
35,309.00 MJ surplus energy
9.7
Criteria air pollutants
19,200.00 microDALYs
8.9
Water intake
529,957.75 L of water
7.8
7.6
Human health cancerous
158,768,677.00g C7 H7 equivalents
Human health noncancerous
5.3
Ecological toxicity
81,646.72g 2,4-D equivalents
7.5
Eutrophication
19,214.20g N equivalents
6.2
Habitat alteration
0.00335 threatened and endangered species count/acre/capita
6.1
3.5
Smog
151,500.03g NOx equivalents/year/capita
Indoor air quality
35,108.09g total volative organic compounds
3.3
3.0
Acidification
7,800,200,000.00 mmol H1 equivalents
Ozone depletion
340.19g CFC-11 equivalents
2.1
Note: CFC-11 5 trichlorofluoromethane; DALY 5 disability-adjusted life-years; 2,4-D 5 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid.
a
Normalization values are per year per capita for the United States unless indicated otherwise.
are presented in terms of emissions and resource consumptions
and are finally translated into environmental impacts. For the
material production, construction, and end-of-life phases, these
steps are directly related to the amount of material used for construction, which is governed by the initial structural design. Fuel
consumption for transportation and construction, which are subunits
of these life-cycle stages, are also functions of the structural design
because a higher material demand leads to more trips and greater use
of machinery. The service-life environmental impact, on the other
hand, cannot be readily assessed using the available inventory, especially when the structure is located in a hazard-prone region.
Because operation and routine maintenance are omitted from the
system boundary, the only contribution of the service-life environmental impact is the activities associated with the repair of damage
to structural components during extreme events. The extent of
damage is evaluated through the LCSPA function of the framework.
Because the seismic hazard, structural response under the hazard,
and subsequent damage all possess inherent uncertainties, a probabilistic methodology is used to assess the seismic damage. To facilitate this assessment, the performance-based earthquake engineering
(PBEE) methodology developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) (Deierlein et al. 2003; Porter 2003;
Moehle and Deierlein 2004) is adopted here for the LCSPA. In
PBEE, the outcome is presented in terms of various decision
variables, such as dollars, deaths, or downtime, which are easily
perceived by stakeholders, policymakers, and others users. In
this study, this methodology is extended to consider the total
environmental impact (including that caused by seismic repair) as
a decision variable.
Interpretation
In this step, results from the inventory analysis or impact assessment
are interpreted to make the necessary recommendations. The environmental impacts of different life-cycle stages are evaluated herein
for RC buildings. The results are presented for the individual impact
categories in the form of a performance index. The rigorous evaluation of the environmental impacts of the service-life phase resulting
from postearthquake repair that is incorporated in the methodology is
the main contribution of this paper that links disaster resilience to
sustainability. This linkage allows for a joint assessment of the lifetime sustainability and resilience of buildings with quantitative
indicators of the environmental impact for decision making. Once
© ASCE
39.9
—
12.1
—
10.4
7.2
10.2
8.4
—
4.7
—
4.1
2.8
combined with the other two outputs of the sustainability assessment
framework, one can assess alternative designs in terms of environmental, social, and economic impacts.
Case Study
In this section, a LCEIA is performed on a case study RC building.
First, a finite-element model of the building is developed to evaluate
the structural performance using nonlinear dynamic analysis for
various hazard levels. The initial and end-of-life environmental
impacts are derived from the design parameters of the building.
The PBEE is used to obtain the seismic environmental loss. Finally, the results are presented to show the contribution of the
service-life environmental impact on the total environmental impact of the structure.
Description of Structural Frames and Selection of
Optimal Designs
A 4-story 3-bay special moment-resisting RC frame is used as the
case study building. The building is assumed to be located in downtown San Francisco, California, with coordinates 3746929:6799 N,
12225910:1299 W. The site is categorized as Class D (FEMA 2003),
and the location has several active faults, namely, the San Andreas,
San Gregorio, and Hayward Faults, in the vicinity of the location.
The earthquake magnitude that could be generated by the faults,
fault-to-site distances, and soil conditions of the site govern the
seismic hazard modeling and selection of ground motions, which
are later used for the design and structural performance assessment.
The heights of the first story and the second to fourth stories are
assumed to be 4.57 and 3.96 m, respectively, with all beams having
a span length of 6.10 m. A 60-year service life is assumed for the
building. The material used for design and construction is concrete
with an ultimate strength of 34:5 N=mm2 (5 ksi) and rebars with
a yield strength of 414 N=mm2 (60 ksi).
The finite-element modeling of the frame is performed using a
fiber-based approach (Elnashai et al. 2010). A suite of seven spectrumcompatible ground motions that comply with ASCE 7-10 (ASCE
2010) requirements is obtained. Structural optimization of the frame
is performed to minimize the dimensions of the structural elements
and reinforcement ratios (decision variables). Alternative designs
are obtained using a multiple-objective structural optimization
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1.90
0.39
58,529
140,141
0.01
0.025
508
381
0.015
0.005
381
762
381
381
0.03
0.06
508
1,016
LCLP
HCHP
0.03
0.04
Maximum
interstory
drift (%)
Total initial
cost (dollars)
Reinforcement
ratio of top
2-story beams
Depth of
top 2-story
beams (mm)
Reinforcement
ratio of first
2-story beams
Depth of
first 2-story
beams (mm)
Depth and
width of
columns (mm)
Design
type
Fig. 4. Results of structural optimization and selection of two optimal
designs for comparison
Reinforcement
ratio of external
columns
Reinforcement
ratio of internal
columns
Design variable
As mentioned earlier, the environmental impact assessment is
based on the assumption that the buildings are restored to their
original structural state every time they experience damage from an
earthquake. The DS of the buildings after the earthquake is determined from the LCSPA following the PEER PBEE methodology. Appropriate repair measures are assigned to each DS as shown
Width of
beams (mm)
Quantifying the Environmental Impacts of
Postearthquake Repair
Table 3. Properties of the Selected Optimal Designs
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technique in which the two objective functions are the initial cost
(comprising the production and construction costs) and the maximum interstory drift ratio during dynamic analysis. A Pareto-optimal
set of solutions are obtained for the two competing objective functions. For such multiple objective optimization problems in which
all objective functions are minimized, a point on the Pareto front is
obtained when all the objective function values of a feasible solution
are less than or equal to the corresponding values of other feasible
solutions, and at least one value is strictly less. The feasibility of
each design combination is checked with regulatory documents
[International Code Council 2009; American Concrete Institute
(ACI) 2011] by using a linear elastic analysis. The detailed structural
optimization procedure is presented in Gencturk and Hossain (2013a).
Among the Pareto-optimal solutions, two equivalent optimal designs
are selected for the LCEIA in this study as shown in Fig. 4. These two
designs are selected for their distinctly different characteristics: one
having a high initial cost and high performance (HCHP; i.e., low
maximum interstory drift) and the other having a low initial cost and
low performance (LCLP; i.e., high maximum interstory drift). One
could have selected another two designs with contrasting objective
function values. The other intermediate optimal designs fall between
these two designs in terms of cost and performance. By analyzing
only the extreme cases, the range of life-cycle environmental impacts
for the intermediate optimal designs can be predicted. Each dot in
Fig. 4 is a combination of the design variables in the solution space
and indicates a feasible solution; that is, the frames comply with the
regulations of ACI 318-11 (ACI 2011). The design parameters for
the two selected frames are provided in Table 3.
J. Archit. Eng.
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Results of the Environmental Impact Assessment
in Table 4. The structure does not experience any damage when it
is in DS0; hence, it does not require any repair. In DS1, the concrete
surfaces of the beams and columns experience minor (hairline)
cracks, which are repaired by injecting epoxy resin. The environmental emissions for epoxy injection are obtained from the
EcoInvent 2.0 database (Frischknecht et al. 2007). The DS2 is
defined as the further opening of cracks and slight spalling of the
concrete cover, which is patched by applying shotcrete. The environmental impact of patch repair is obtained from Årskog et al.
(2004). In DS3, the structure suffers significant damage in the form
of excessive spalling and crushing of concrete and yielding of
reinforcing bars. In this case, RC jacketing is used for repair. The
steps involved in jacketing are removing the damaged concrete,
preparing the interface surface, applying the bonding agents, installing the longitudinal and shear reinforcement, and applying the
new concrete. It is assumed that the thickness and ratio of the rebar to
the gross concrete area of the jacketed beams and columns are 50 mm
and 0.05, respectively. The environmental emission data for concrete
jacketing is obtained from Årskog et al. (2004) for hydrojetting, from
the EcoInvent 2.0 database (Frischknecht et al. 2007) for application of
epoxy resin as a bonding agent, and from B-PATH (Masanet et al.
2012) for application of concrete and steel as a jacket. Finally, DS4
corresponds to severe damage experienced by the structural components. In such a case, the entire element needs to be replaced, and
the environmental impact associated with the replacement is the
same as the initial preuse environmental impact (i.e., material
production and construction). However, replacement requires removing, demolishing, and discarding the damaged materials. Hence,
the initial environmental impact is increased by 15% to account
for the impact of these additional activities (Chiu 2012). For simplicity, the recycling of damaged products in the use phase is not
considered. The results are simplified and represented in terms of
index factors. These indexes represent the ratio of the environmental impact from repair activity to that from one or more of the initial
life-cycle stages as indicated in Table 4. To find the environmental
impact of a component of a certain repair activity, the total environmental impact of the relevant life-cycle stage is multiplied by the
index factor. The authors acknowledge the considerable uncertainty
in evaluating the environmental impacts of repair activities. However,
information in the literature was insufficient at the time of writing of
this paper to quantify this uncertainty. Therefore, when the assessment here was performed according to the PEER PBEE methodology, the environmental impacts of repair are treated as deterministic
variables.
As mentioned before, the lifetime environmental impact assessment
is conducted by following the PEER PBEE methodology and
accomplishing four successive steps: seismic hazard analysis,
structural response evaluation, damage assessment, and loss analysis.
In hazard analysis, a suite of seven ground motions are selected and
scaled for each of the three earthquake intensity levels having return
periods of 75, 475, and 2,475 years. The average values of the seismic
hazard parameters are given in Table 5, whereas detailed information
regarding the characteristics of ground motions is available in
Gencturk (2013). Nonlinear inelastic analyses are performed using
the selected ground motions to obtain the engineering demand
parameters, such as the strains and interstory drifts for different
members of the frame. These demand parameters are used to
evaluate the probability of the structure being in a certain DS. The
steps to obtain the DS of the structure are essentially the same as
those in most other studies that use the PEER PBEE methodology
(Deierlein et al. 2003; Porter 2003; Moehle and Deierlein 2004).
Each DS is assumed to require a certain repair action as previously
mentioned, which is then used to evaluate the environmental impacts
of the damage. For a detailed step-by-step description of the LCSPA
methodology used here, refer to Gencturk and Hossain (2013b).
Damage assessment provides results in terms of probabilities
that an element will be in a certain DS for a given hazard level. By
assigning the appropriate repair measures and unit repair environmental impact from Table 4, the total repair environmental impact of
a facility is calculated. The environmental impact values conditional
on the occurrence of different DS corresponding to the repair phase
of the structure are shown in Table 6 for the previously selected suite
of seven ground motions at the 75-year return period (YRP) hazard
level. These conditional values do not account for the probability of
the components being in a certain DS or the probability of the
occurrence of a 75 YRP earthquake; therefore, they are considerably
larger compared with the mean annual EPS values subsequently
presented. Nevertheless, these results provide a midline solution and
help demonstrate the overall environmental impact assessment
procedure.
Calculations similar to those in Table 6 are also made for ground
motions having a 475 and 2,475 YRP. The data for the probability of
exceeding the repair environmental impact at different hazard levels
fit to a lognormal distribution. Finally, loss curves are developed by
integrating the complementary cumulative distribution functions of
the lognormal distributions over the hazard curves as shown
in Fig. 5. The loss curves are a probabilistic representation of the
Table 4. Relationships between DS, Repair Method, and Environmental Impact
DS
Repair method
Index factor
Life-cycle stage
DS0
DS1
DS2
DS3
DS4
None
Injecting epoxy resin
Patching
Concrete jacketing
Replacement
0
0.05
0.10
0.30 (beams), 0.40 (columns)
1.15
—
Concrete production and construction
Concrete production and construction
Concrete and steel production and construction
Concrete and steel production and construction
Table 5. Parameters Used in Selection of Ground Motion Records for Different Hazard Levels
Hazard level
75-year return period
475-year return period
2,475-year return period
© ASCE
Magnitude (Mw )
Peak ground
acceleration (g)
Shear-wave velocity of at the
recording station (m=s)
Distance (km)
6.48
7.05
6.63
0.24
0.51
0.66
322.56
364.70
331.79
20.52
12.06
7.52
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Table 6. Sample Calculations for Environmental Impact of the Repair Phase (Conditional Values)
Element type
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Beams
DS
Index factor
DS0
0
DS1
0.01
DS2
0.05
DS3
0.30
DS4
1.15
Columns
DS0
0
DS1
0.01
DS2
0.05
DS3
0.40
DS4
1.15
Total repair environmental impact (EPS)
Amount of materials requiring repair (kg) for 75 YRP ground motions
Unit environmental impact
(EPS/kg of materials)
0
36.71
36.71
45.43
48.28
0
36.71
36.71
45.43
48.28
GM1
GM2
GM3
GM4
GM5
GM6
GM7
0
0
4,779
52,572
0
0
10,742
42,966
3,581
0
873,177
0
0
0
57,351
0
0
10,742
39,386
7,161
0
988,038
0
0
14,338
43,013
0
0
10,742
46,547
7,161
0
832,086
0
0
19,117
38,234
0
0
0
50,127
7,161
0
778,349
0
0
19,117
38,234
0
0
14,322
32,225
10,742
0
815,812
0
0
4,779
52,572
0
0
3,581
50,127
3,581
0
883,693
0
0
9,558
47,792
0
0
7,161
50,127
0
0
763,575
Fig. 5. Loss curves: (a) LCLP; (b) HCHP design
environmental impact, and they express the mean annual rate of
exceeding a given EPS. The area below the curve gives the annual
EPS of the structure resulting from postearthquake repair, giving
values of 3.38 and 1.13% for the LCLP and HCHP designs, respectively. In other words, the repair activities of the LCLP and
HCHP designs contribute to, respectively, 3.38 and 1.125% of the
© ASCE
annual per capita environmental impact in the United States. Multiplying these values by the service life of the structure gives the total
life-cycle repair environmental impact.
The breakdown values of the total environmental impact of the
two structures are given in Table 7, whereas the relative contributions of different life-cycle phases of the LCLP and HCHP designs to
all the environmental impact categories are shown in Figs. 6(a and b).
The results look significantly different for the LCLP and HCHP
designs. The LCLP design uses fewer materials for construction;
therefore, the environmental impacts during the initial and endof-life phases are less, whereas the opposite is true for the HCHP
design. Although both structures are designed to comply with seismic
design codes, the low structural performance of the LCLP design
requires excessive repair after small to moderate earthquakes and
complete replacement after strong earthquakes. These repair activities result in a considerable amount of environmental impact during
the use phase of the structure. The environmental impacts in the use
phase for the LCLP design are as high as 48% of the total impact for
certain categories, such as global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical smog, confirming the importance of including the use phase in the assessment. In contrast, the HCHP design
results in two to four times less environmental impact during the use
phase for different impact categories compared to the LCLP design.
However, because of the greater material usage and increased
construction effort, and the consequent increase in initial and endof-life environmental impacts, the HCHP design produces an
environmental impact that is 1.8 to 4.0 times greater in different
categories compared with the LCLP design. Hence, the LCLP design provides a more sustainable solution in terms of environmental impact between the two designs.
As previously described, the EPS is used as an indicator for
comparison of the lifetime environmental impacts. The relative contribution of different life-cycle phases to the annual EPS of each
optimal design is shown in Fig. 7. The LCLP and HCHP designs
contribute 10.12 and 28.02%, respectively, to the total annual per
capita environmental impact in the United States during a service
life of each structure of 50 years. Although the actual values provide
useful information regarding the global impact of the structure, they
do not directly facilitate the selection of the most sustainable or
environmentally friendly design, which is one of the purposes of the
case study presented here. In contrast, a comparison of equivalent
designs assists in the decision-making process by facilitating the
selection of the design that has the least life-cycle environmental
impact but at the same time meets other performance objectives.
The results indicate that the EPS of the HCHP design exceeds that
of the LCLP design by almost 2.75 times. This is mainly because of
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Table 7. Environmental Impacts of Selected Optimal Designs: LCLP and HCHP
Material production
Impact
LCLP
HCHP
Construction
LCLP
HCHP
Use
LCLP
End of life
HCHP
LCLP
HCHP
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1
22,597
90,129
16,036
48,002
33,020
8,912
1,392
5,421
AP-a (H mol eq.)
ET-a (kg 2,4-D eq.)
244.28
916.83
3.15
9.41
109.43
53.15
677.80
3,291
ET-w (kg 2,4-D eq.)
23.14
83.97
0.05
0.16
10.39
5.24
0.07
0.26
E-a (kg N eq.)
11.68
41.73
14.09
42.22
25.81
6.32
1.50
5.83
E-w (kg N eq.)
0.96
4.08
0
0
0.41
0.20
0
0
77,635
285,428
36,274
108,783
88,038
27,104
2,421
9,431
GWP-a (kg CO2 eq.)
HHC-a (kg benzene eq.)
5,760
20,656
6.90
20.58
2,429
1,198
0.09
0.35
HHC-w (kg benzene eq.)
372.30
1,277
0
0
166.60
85.18
0.05
0.18
HHNC-a (kg toluene eq.)
555,014
1,902,413
29.71
88.63
248,758
127,416
84.08
327.47
HHNC-w (kg PM2.5 eq.)
18.15
92.16
2.62
7.83
10.51
3.65
0.09
0.33
ACP (kg toluene eq.)
890,700
3,117,696
968.51
2,889
397,532
201,984
180.24
702.02
OD-a (kg CFC-11 eq.)
0.08
0.43
0
0
0.03
0.013
0
0
338.32
1,241
395.51
1,185
727.48
178.36
45.82
178.47
Smog-a (kg NOx eq.)
Note: a 5 air; ACP 5 air criteria pollusion; AP 5 acidification potential; CFC-11 5 trichlorofluoromethane; E 5 eutrophication; ET 5 ecological toxicity;
GWP 5 global warming potential; HHC 5 human health cancerous; HHNC 5 human health noncancerous; OD 5 ozone depletion; PM2.55 fine particle;
w 5 water; 2,4-D 5 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid.
Fig. 6. Environmental impact broken down into life-cycle stages: (a) LCLP; (b) HCHP design
© ASCE
A4014001-10
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proposed framework helps the decision-making process in terms of
facilitating the selection of the most sustainable solution that causes
the minimum life-cycle environmental impact.
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References
Fig. 7. Comparison of the EPSs of the two designs
the high environmental impact in the initial and end-of-life phases.
However, the HCHP design results in a lower EPS in the use phase
because of its better structural performance during earthquakes.
Nevertheless, the improved service-life environmental performance
of the HCHP design cannot be justified because of the exceedingly
high total EPS when the environmental impact is the only criterion
for assessment.
Conclusions
Sustainable design and construction has received considerable attention over the last decade; although, sustainability has mainly been
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