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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has taken measures to improve safety, reduce costs, increase resilience, and improve the sustainability of the United States (U.S.) airfield infrastructure by using a life-cycle cost analysis methodology to increase the efficient use of economic resources needed for expanding and preserving the airfield system. However, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach for evaluating the environmental impacts of decisions regarding airfield infrastructure has yet to be fully developed and applied. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the use of the airfield LCA framework that was developed for the FAA and can be used by U.S. airports. The comparison of alternative pavement designs at Nashville International Airport (BNA) is presented. The scope of the study was from cradle to laid, materials, materials transportation, and construction stages of the pavement life cycle are considered, and the maintenance, use and end of life stages are not considered. Primary data were acquired from BNA and secondary data were used in situations of unavailability of primary data. The case study showed that performing LCA provides opportunities for airports to consider energy use and environment-related impacts in the decision-making process.

Development of the pavement network systems, which is inevitable due to the rapid economic growth, has increasingly become a topic of significant concern because of the severe environmental impacts of road expansion. For achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the policies and actions towards the pavements’ life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) must be carefully assessed. Consequently, the purpose of this review is to present an overview of LCA and LCCA used in pavement engineering and management. Through the quality control of PRISMA, fifty-five most relevant documents were extracted for a thorough investigation. The state of the art review reveals that a limited number of the papers considered environmental impacts of the pavements. Consequently, to assess the environmental impact cost, a conceptual framework was developed to better consider the LCA and LCCA on various aspects of the pavement projects including the sustainability aspects. Besides, a case study was given to validate the literature review towards proposing a novel framework for the incorporation of environmental impact cost.

It is well-known that the existing building stock is responsible for non-renewable resource depletion, energy and material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Life cycle analysis (LCA) procedures have thus been developed, in recent years, to assess the environmental impact of construction and operational phases through the entire building life cycle. Furthermore, the economic, environmental, and social consequences of recent natural disasters have encouraged the additional integration of hazard-induced impacts into common LCA procedures for buildings. Buildings are however expected to provide the population with safe living and working conditions, even when hit by different types of hazards during their service life, such as earthquakes. Hence, next-generation LCA procedures should include not only hazard-induced impacts, but also the contribution of potential retrofitting strategies that may alter the structural and energy performances of buildings throughout their remaining service life. This study presents a life cycle framework that accounts for the contributions of initial construction, operational energy consumption, earthquake-induced damage repair activities, potential retrofitting interventions, and demolition (considering also its associated potential material recycling), in terms of both monetary costs and environmental impacts. The proposed methodology can be used to undertake cost-benefit analyses aimed at identifying building renovation strategies that lead to an optimal balance, considering both economic and environmental impacts, between reduction of seismic vulnerability and increase of energy efficiency of a building, depending on the climatic conditions and the seismic hazard at the site of interest.

The current design practice for the vertical profile of roads in rolling and mountainous terrains is to follow the existing grades in order to minimize earthwork costs. This means that the only criterion considered during the design phase is the initial cost. It would be preferable to include other criteria that are directly related to sustainability, particularly fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Therefore, this paper describes a proposed design procedure that starts by finding feasible alternatives with different grades. Then, a microsimulation traffic tool is used to simulate the movement of predicted vehicles (volume and type) over the different alternatives. The microsimulation tool provides reliable estimates of travel times, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions for the different alternatives. With these data, it is possible to use life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) or multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) tools to select the &ldquo, optimal&rdquo, alternative. The proposed procedure was used on a case study involving a 6-km highway section with different proposed grades ranging from 2% to 8%. Using LCCA and an MCDA tool, it was revealed that the current design alternative is not the optimal alternative in most considered scenarios (various fuel values for LCCA and different &ldquo, Cost&rdquo, weights for MCDA).

The debate on the relevance of the global sustainability (including energy, environmental, social, economic, and political aspects) of building stock is becoming increasingly important in Europe. In this context, special attention is placed on the refurbishment of existing buildings, in particular those characterized by significant volumes and poor energy performance. Directive 2012/27/EU introduced stringent constraints (often disregarded) for public administrations to ensure a minimum yearly renovation quota of its building stock. This study describes how Life Cycle Cost analysis (LCC) can be used as a tool to identify the “cost-optimal level” among different design solutions to improve the energy performance of existing buildings. With this aim, a social housing building located in the town of Pisa (Italy) was chosen as the case study, for which two alternative renovation designs were compared using the LCC methodology to identify the optimal solution. The two alternatives were characterized by the same energy performance—one was based on the demolition of the existing building and the construction of a new building (with a wooden frame structure, as proposed by the public company owner of the building), while the other was based on the renovation of the existing building. This study can provide useful information, especially for designers and public authorities, about the relevance of the economic issues related to the renovation of social housing in a Mediterranean climate.

The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for supporting decision-making in the design stages of new buildings or in the retrofitting of existing heritages. The focus is on the evaluation of economic&ndash, environmental sustainability, considering the presence of risk and uncertainty. An application of risk analysis in conjunction with Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is proposed for selecting the preferable solution between technological options, which represents a recent and poorly explored context of analysis. It is assumed that there is a presence of uncertainty in cost estimating, in terms of the Life-Cycle Cost Estimates (LCCEs) and uncertainty in the technical performance of the life-cycle cost analysis. According to the probability analysis, which was solved through stochastic simulation and the Monte Carlo Method (MCM), risk and uncertainty are modeled as stochastic variables or as &ldquo, stochastic relevant cost drivers&rdquo, Coherently, the economic&ndash, financial and energy&ndash, environmental sustainability is analyzed through the calculation of a conjoint &ldquo, economic&ndash, environmental indicator&rdquo, in terms of the stochastic global cost. A case study of the multifunctional building glass fa&ccedil, ade project in Northern Italy is proposed. The application demonstrates that introducing flexibility into the input data and the duration of the service lives of components and the economic and environmental behavior of alternative scenarios can lead to opposite results compared to a deterministic analysis. The results give full evidence of the environmental variables&rsquo, capacity to significantly perturb the model output.

The durability of components is characterized by uncertainty, and, consequently, their estimated service life is critical for building project evaluation. Data on the durability of components used as life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) model input are able to influence model construction, model outputs, and residual value calculations. This implies dealing with uncertainty in cost estimates, according to the real estate market dynamics and the economic trends of the construction sector, and in service life estimates during the project time-horizon. This paper acknowledges the methodology presented in previous studies, based on the stochastic global cost calculation. The aim is to propose a methodological step forward by introducing flexibility over time in model input, through a stochastic approach to the Factor Method (FM). This represents an advancement in respect to the FM normed by ISO 15686&mdash, part 1:2000. Two different frames, timber and aluminum, as components of a glass fa&ccedil, ade of an office building project (located in Turin, Northern Italy), are proposed as a case study. The results give full evidence of the capacity of lifespan variables to affect the global cost calculation, overcoming the effects of environmental and financial elements, in contrast with the consolidated literature. The study demonstrates that beta and gamma distributions are preferable when introducing flexibility over time during the building construction processes, confirming the literature on the topic. The methodology adopted is demonstrated to be an effective tool when in presence of alternative investment options, enforcing decision-making in a temporal perspective.