ABSTRACT
The degradation of the built environment is an enormous economic and environmental problem. Knowledge about the exposure environment and its relationship with the degradation of various building materials is very much needed both in the environmental research area, and in the building and construction sector as a basis for proper maintenance and service life planning. A model for cost assessments and the data needed is described and a review is made of important studies performed to generate data. The concept of “critical loads”/“acceptable corrosion rate” from environmental research can be very useful in the building and construction sector where work now is going on to standardize methods for prediction of service life of building materials and constructions. These prediction models are based on knowledge of degradation mechanisms and dose-response functions, and their use are now being facilitated by data and models from the environmental research area.
