An Integrated Approach for Sustainability (IAS): Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a supporting tool for Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and social issues

SPEAR is the acronym for the European research project Seismic Performance Assessment and Rehabilitation of existing buildings, and the SPEAR building is the three-storey replica of an existing non-seismic building, full-scale tested at the ELSA Laboratory. In previous studies, a practical cost-benefits analysis was used to compare the performance of the specimen in the two different rehabilitated configurations: GFRP-retrofitted specimen and RC-jacketed structure. This paper presents a method to assess the best solution between alternative interventions including sustainability issues in the economic evaluation. The main aim of this study, in fact, is to create an integrated approach as the key to make choices in terms of life cycle cost benefits analysis. Normally, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process, or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and wastes released to the environment (from the cradle to grave). In the present study LCA methodology is calibrated as a decision support tool for economic analysis. At this regard, the first step was the environmental impacts analysis derived from the production (pre-use phase), installation (use phase) and waste treatment (end of life phase) of the two retrofitting measures. SimaPro software (version 7.1.8) was used to implement LCA model and to carry out the assessment in terms of tons CO2 emissions. It is clear that environmental results are not compatible with cost analysis (expressed in Euro) for the two configurations; therefore, to define a global result, CO2 emissions are converted in Euro unit, considering both the costs of the expected damages and the benefits derived from global climate change.