Estimating Environmental Load of PSC Beam Bridge Using Standard Quantities and Resource DB Model

Efforts should be expended during the design stages to reduce the environmental load to ensure the existence of possible design alternatives and to realise an eco-friendly design. This study suggests a model for environmental load estimation using the minimum possible information from the initial design stages for a Pre-Stressed Concrete (PSC) beam bridge, the most common type. The standard quantity database (DB) and resource DB of major work items are established to estimate the total amount of resources required. Major design variables including bridge length and width, height of substructure and foundation depth are used. The environmental load can be calculated along with the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) DB. The proposed method can estimate the material requirements for each work process with higher accuracy because it allows for the calculation of the quantity of resources according to the unit quantity of all major work items. The results obtained from this model are compared with those of the actual cases. The environmental load of the suggested model yields a mean absolute error rate of 2.44% and a standard deviation of 2.58%. This model exhibits higher reliability compared with the conventional basic unit method, which is commonly used for environmental load estimation.