Assessment of network-level environmental sustainability in infrastructure systems using service and performance adjusted life cycle analysis

Managing environmental impacts of civil infrastructure systems is critical for fostering sustainable development. However, despite the growing body of literature, an integrated methodology that captures the specific traits of infrastructure systems for a network-level environmental impact assessment is still missing. The objective of this paper is to propose a novel methodology [called Service and Performance Adjusted Life Cycle Assessment (SPA-LCA)] for addressing the limitations of the traditional LCA in environmental assessment of infrastructure networks. The SPA-LCA methodology adopts a service-based accounting approach to enable aggregation of the impacts pertaining to assets with different functions and service life expectancies at the network level. In the proposed SPA-LCA methodology, first, through conducting traditional asset-level LCA, life cycle inventories for the assets are determined. Second, the life cycle inventories are disaggregated to performance-sensitive and none-sensitive impacts. Then, using a hybrid mathematical/agent-based simulation model, the levels of service and performance are simulated for different assets in the network across the analysis horizon. Finally, the environmental impacts are determined for each year based on the levels of service and performance. The application of the proposed SPA-LCA method is demonstrated in environmental assessment of a road network. The results highlight the capabilities of SPA-LCA in providing better insight regarding environmental performance of infrastructure networksNon UBCUnreviewedFacultyOthe