A MODEL FOR APPRAISING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF BRIDGES

A. Amiri*, C. Arya** & P.R. Vassie**

*Gifford Ltd, London **Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, UCL

Keywords: Sustainability, Sustainable development, Sustainability appraisal, bridges, SASS Abstract:

Bridge construction and maintenance costs the UK economy several hundreds of millions of pounds annually and can have significant social and environmental impacts. However design decisions continue to be dominated by initial costs although in recent years design decisions have also been based on life time costs. None or very little account is taken of the environmental and social factors relevant to sustainable development, which is essential to our well being and the well being of the planet. The first part of this paper describes a straightforward spread sheet model called SASS which has been developed to appraise the sustainability of bridges. The indicators used to assess sustainability are climate change, resource use, waste, heritage & ecology, dust, noise, vibration, aesthetics, employment and businesses, construction costs, maintenance costs and user delay costs. The paper describes the aim of each indicator and provides details of the method of measurement. The second part of the paper presents the results of a case study on three bridge types namely, a four span continuous steel beam and slab bridge with integral bankseats, a two-span simply supported prestressed concrete beam and slab bridge with cantilever abutments and a three span voided concrete slab bridge. Details of the key input parameters are provided. The way in which individual impacts are combined in order to produce an overall sustainability score for the structure is highlighted. The paper is concluded with a short discussion on the findings.

1. INTRODUCTION
Sustainable development is about achieving economic growth while protecting the environment and making sure that economic and environmental benefits are available to all of society, now and in the future. The construction industry in general and civil engineering in particular has a large impact on the economy, society and the environment and therefore has a major role in delivering this objective. One method of encouraging the provision of sustainable civil infrastructure which is gaining in popularity is the use of sustainability appraisal 1 tools. A number of such tools are seemingly available including CEEQUAL , 2 3 SPeAR and Sustainability Accounting . On closer inspection, however, they either predominantly focus on environmental issues or fail to aggregate the various dimensions of sustainability which makes it difficult to identify the most sustainable solution where several options exist. To address these drawbacks a new spreadsheet model for sustainability appraisal has recently been developed at UCL. The tool termed System for Appraising the Sustainability of Structures (SASS) is pseudo-quantitative. It has primarily been developed to appraise bridge structures but the methodology is sufficiently general that it could easily be adapted for use with other types of civil infrastructure. This paper introduces SASS and explains how sustainability is measured by the model. A case study on three alternative designs of bridges is also presented to illustrate its use.

2. SASS
Fig. 1 shows the set of indicators used to measure sustainability. The indicators are grouped under the three generally accepted key themes of sustainability: environmental protection, society and economics.

Sustainability Indicators

Figure 1 - SASS Sustainability Indicators

Thus it can be seen that environmental protection covers climate change, resource use, waste and heritage & ecology. Society deals with dust, noise, vibration and aesthetics. Economics encompasses employment and businesses, construction costs, maintenance costs and user delay costs. The impact of some of these factors including climate change, resources use and costs are evaluated in purely numerical terms. The method of assessment used for other factors such as heritage and ecology and aesthetics is more subjective and involves addressing a series of questions and scoring the responses. The following briefly describes the aim(s) of each factor and how individual impacts are assessed.

3. CLIMATE CHANGE
SASS assumes climate change is directly related to carbon dioxide emissions. The model enables the CO2 equivalent emissions associated with the following items/activities to be estimated: materials for construction and maintenance work, transport of materials from factory gate to building site, plant required for construction, transport of construction and demolition waste, transport for employees from home to building site and congestion leading to inefficient burning of fuel during maintenance work. The CO2 emissions resulting from congestion, assumed to be 30% above normal 4 emission levels , are in turn based on number of maintenance treatments, traffic flow rate, percentage of heavy goods vehicles, and length and duration of road closure. The CO2 emissions data included in SASS is based on inventories/guidance 5 6 produced by a number of bodies including the University of Bath , DEFRA and the 7 Environment Agency .

4. RESOURCES
Civil infrastructure generally requires significant quantities of resources to construct and maintain. SASS recommends that the resources that should be measured and minimised are energy, materials, land and water. 4.1 Energy The aim here is to promote energy efficiency. SASS enables the energy required for the following operations to be taken into account: manufacture of construction materials, transport of materials from factory gate to building site, operation of plant/equipment and transport of construction and demolition waste. As in the case of CO2 emissions, the data given in SASS to estimate energy use is principally based on inventories produced by the University of Bath, DEFRA and the Environment Agency. 4.2 Materials The aim is to minimise the amount of material required for construction and maintenance work. SASS recommends that the impact of materials is principally based on the total weight of virgin material required over the life time of the structure. Account could also be taken of the total amount of reserves but this is generally unnecessary as most construction materials are plentiful in supply. 4.3 Land The aim is to minimise the area of land required for the project as well as any adverse effect of construction and/or maintenance work at or below ground level or to adjacent property. SASS recommends that the impact of land is determined taking account of total land take, quality of land at end of project, % brown-field, % agricultural land, adverse effect on surrounding properties due to proposed works e.g. increased risk of flooding, and potential loss of mineral resources.

4.4 Water The aim is to minimise water usage on the project and the risk of contamination of surface and ground water. On this basis, SASS assesses the impact based on the following factors: total volume of potable water required, risk of contamination of water courses and mitigation measures, risk of contamination of ground water and mitigation measures and past performance

5. Waste
The aim here is to minimise the amount of hazardous waste and the volume of material going to land fill. A further aim is to promote more use of waste materials during construction and maintenance works and design for deconstruction. SASS assesses performance in this area by considering the total volume of waste, volume of waste going to land fill, volume of waste reused/recycled, volume of hazardous waste produced and evidence of past performance.

6. Heritage and ecology

The aim is to minimise use of land of high ecological or heritage/archaeological value. A further aim is to minimise any adverse effect on habitats and assets of heritage/archaeological value during construction and maintenance operations. The impact is assessed taking into account area of land of high ecological value, number of habitats that will be adversely affected during construction and operation phases, area of land of high heritage/archaeological value and number of assets of heritage/archaeological importance that will be adversely affected during construction and operation phases.

7. Noise
Undesirable sound is referred to as noise. Noise can affect human being in several ways including annoyance, interference with various day to day activities, hearing loss and stress leading to a number of health problems. SASS assesses noise impact based on noise dose, frequency of noisy events, number of individuals affected, effect on neighbours and public consultation. Noise dose is a function of noise intensity and duration. It indicates the hazard posed by exposure to noise of a certain intensity. The number of times such an event occurs during construction and/or maintenance work is also considered as is the number of individuals that are likely to be affected. Attention should also be focused on the type of neighbouring properties and the likely adverse effect of noise on normal activities e.g. health care, commerce, education, etc. Here, the time of construction activity e.g. day time, night time, weekday, weekend, etc might also be relevant. Public meetings or other ways of keeping neighbours informed may help reduce nuisance/complaints.

8. Dust
Dust emissions from construction activity are a common and well recognised problem. Some of the harmful effects of dust include lung problems, eye irritation and carcinogenicity, nuisance due to surface soiling of property, damage to plant and aquatic life.

SASS assesses the impact based on a set of questions which examine the control measures in respect of issues related to, amongst others, the use of various types of plant used on site, storage of materials, emissions from stockpiles and spillages, disposal of waste material and the condition of major haulage and traffic routes, effect on neighbours and public consultation.

9. Vibration
Site operations such as blasting, pile driving, dynamic compaction of loose soils and use of heavy equipment can cause ground and structural vibrations. Excessive vibrations can also result in nuisance to local communities, interference with sensitive equipment and decrease in serviceability and durability of structures. Vibration is assessed in a similar fashion to noise and involves consideration of vibration dose, frequency, effect on neighbours and public consultation.

10. Aesthetics
Aesthetics is assessed using work presented by the Australian Roads and Traffic 8 9 Authority and the Highways Agency . Aesthetics is based purely on a series of questions. The method involves making separate assessment of the bridge as a whole, the bridge and its surroundings, parts and details, exceptional circumstances and public consultation. The responses are used to score the design.

11. Employment and businesses

The aim is to minimise impacts and maximise opportunities for local communities/businesses. This is assessed by means of a series of questions which assess the potential impact on local labour and benefits for local businesses as a result of the project. Also considered are the potential adverse effects on local communities and mitigation measures.

12. Constructions costs

The aim is to minimise the initial cost of construction. This principally involves estimating the cost of labour, plant and material.

13. Maintenance costs

The aim is to minimise the cost of routine maintenance and repair work required over the life time of the structure. This principally involves estimating the cost of access, labour, plant, materials and traffic management.

14. User delay costs

The aim is to minimise the cost of disruption during routine maintenance and repair of the structure. This involves principally taking account of the number of maintenance interventions and durability of repair, length and duration of road closure, timing of work, traffic flow rate and percentage of heavy goods vehicles.

15. Case study

In order to assess the merits of this appraisal tool outline design of three bridge structures were prepared. Fig. 2 shows the construction details.
Bridge 1

Bridge 2

Bridge 3

Figure 2 - Bridge design options

All the bridges considered in this study are overbridges designed to carry a single carriageway minor road (6,000 vehicles per day) over a dual two lane motorway plus hard shoulder (60,000 vpd). Bridge 1 is a four span continuous composite steel beam and slab bridge with integral bankseats. The intermediate supports are wall piers. Bridge 2 is a two span simply supported composite prestressed concrete beam and slab bridge. It has cantilever abutments with wing walls and an intermediate wall pier. Bridge 3 is a three spans simply supported structure. The deck is a reinforced concrete voided slab. The right abutment is a cantilever with wing walls and the left is a bankseat. The intermediate supports consist of columns and crossbeam. The results of the sustainability appraisal for the three bridges are summarised in Table 1. Table 2 shows a breakdown of carbon dioxide emissions, energy and weights of materials for the three bridges. The CO2 emissions and energy requirements were determined via the weight of materials, the mode of transport/distance between factory gate and site and traffic congestion. The quantities of materials required for maintenance work were estimated using a combination of judgement and information found in published literature. The impact of dust, noise and vibration has simply been quoted in number of days (Table 1) as it has been assumed that the other factors will be similar for the three schemes. Thus it was assumed that the nuisance from dust, noise and vibration during the construction phase would last for 200 days for all bridge types. Bridge 1 requires the least amount of maintenance and the nuisance to neighbours per maintenance intervention was estimated to be 158 days. Bridge 3 is the least durable and the nuisance to neighbours per maintenance intervention was estimated to be 196 days and for Bridge 2 164 days. Table 3 shows the breakdown of construction costs for the three bridges. The rates and prices used were obtained from published literature. Tables 4 and 5 show, respectively, a breakdown of whole life maintenance and user delay costs.

It can be seen from Table 1 that a variety of units have been used to quantify impacts associated with for example CO2 emissions (tonnes), energy use (Giga joules), dust (days) and costs (). On the other hand aesthetics has no units and simply consists of a numerical score. In order to evaluate which option is the most sustainable it is necessary to combine impacts and this has been achieved by means of normalising and weighting the data. Normalising has been carried out by comparing individual values with the combined sustainability performance for all the options considered. Thus in the case of CO2 emissions the normalised score for Bridge 1 is given by: [1 10028 / (10028 + 8546 + 7035)] 100 = 60.8. Using this approach the option producing the highest CO2 emissions will yield the lowest normalised score which signifies that it is the least sustainable and vice versa. The normalised scores are multiplied by weighting factors which are based on (i) sustainability theme (ii) number of indicators per theme. The default value for each of the three sustainability themes (i.e. environment, society and economics) is 1 which gives each theme a weighting of 0.333. Other weightings can be used provided this is justified. The default value for all sustainability indicators i.e. climate change, energy, dust, noise, etc, is also set at 1. Here too other weightings can be used provided this is justified. If all seven environmental indicators are considered then the weighting for each indicator would be 1/7 = 0.143. In this example, however, only three out the seven indicators are used and therefore the weighting for relevant environmental indicators is 1/3 = 0.333. The overall weighting is given by the product of the weighting for the theme and the weighting assigned to each relevant sustainability indicator. Thus the weighting for all the environmental indicators is 0.333 0.333 = 0.111. Similarly the weighting for all the societal indicators is 0.333 0.25 = 0.083 and for the economic indicators is 0.333 0.333 = 0.111. The weighted scores are summed in order to arrive at the sustainability performance for the design options. The results in Table 1 suggest that the continuous composite steel beam and slab bridge (Bridge 1) is the most sustainable whereas the reinforced concrete voided slab bridge (Bridge 3) is the least sustainable. From Table 1 it can be also seen that the factors which most influence sustainability are the maintenance costs and traffic delay costs. The maintenance costs for Bridge 1 are significantly lower than for Bridges 2 and 3 because the area exposed to chloride environments is correspondingly lower due to the absence of expansion joints. The traffic delay costs for Bridge 1, however, are much greater due to the need for steel painting. This requires full carriageway closures and contra flow traffic management.

REFERENCES
[1] CIRIA and CRANE Environmental, 2008, CEEQUAL, www.ceequal.com [2] Casella Stanger, Sustainability Accounting in the Construction Business,2002. [3] http://www.arup.com [4] Boulter, P.G. et al, DETR, TRL Report 482, 2001. [5] Hammond, G. and Jones, C., Inventory of Carbon and Energy, Univ. of Bath. [6] DEFRA, Guidelines to Defra's GHG Conversion Factors, 2008. [7] http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/ [8] Australian Roads & Transport Authority, Bridge Aesthetics, 2004. [9] Highways Agency, DMRB, The Design & Appearance of Bridges, 1998.