ABSTRACT

With regard to climate change, energy consumption and consequential Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is becoming more important. This issue is also becoming relevant for soil bioengineering. It is a technique using plants for civil a hydraulic engineering purposes. It can be applied as standalone solutions or in combination with conventional engineering structures. So far, no LCA models exist for soil bioengineering constructions. Therefore a new systematic scheme with differentiation of the natural hazard processes for bioengineering constructions is developed. The most important output of the scheme is a list of needed materials for each construction type, because this information is necessary as input for LCA studies and working with OpenLCA (software). This is an important step, because the existing assessment schemes are based solely on economic feasibility studies. Furthermore, these innovative Environmental LCA models will provide a higher level of transparency for the responsible planners, by pointing out the effective costs – involving natural resources – of all construction phases and components.