ABSTRACT
Sustainability should become a basic concept for efficient/high quality design and operation of any structure through entire life cycle. Concrete is gradually becoming a building material with a high potential for such new technical solutions that meet new requirements, leading to the necessary reduction of environmental impacts and consequent improvement of social and economic conditions. The specific type of structures are bridges, where traditionally dominant requirements are efficiency of structural performance connected with cost efficiency, and due to a visual exposure to their architectural form and aesthetics. However, environmental quality is not usually considered. The need for an environmental assessment of different alternatives is becoming increasingly important due to the need to reduce environmental impacts, especially the carbon footprint. Environmental assessment could be done using existing standard methodologies of LCA in line with the concept of implementation of sustainability principles of concrete structures in the new fib ModelCode 2020. The paper presents a LCA case study focusing on concrete footbridge over the Labe river in Čelákovice, Czech Republic. One alternative is traditional design, and the second two represent advanced design using precast elements from UHPC. The detailed LCA analysis performed compares all three alternatives from an environmental impact point of view.
