Sustainability Assessment of Bridges - Recent German Research Results

Bridges are designed and built for a scheduled service life of 100 years. At tender stage decision making should no longer only be based on construction costs but on a holistic assessment with regard to sustainability aspects. In the German research project "NaBrü"; a bottom-up approach was applied. Within the project environmental and economic aspects were assessed with the methods of LCA (Life-Cycle Assessment) and LCC (Life-Cycle Costing). In addition to LCA and LCC external effects were investigated in detail. Three different types of reference bridges and additionally different construction variants were studied over the entire life-cycle. Based on the results specific characteristics of bridges were pointed out regarding sustainability assessment. In this paper the current state of the art of sustainability assessment for bridge constructions in Germany is shown. Recent research results are summarized and conclusions for highway bridges given.