TY - GEN
T1 - THE ROLE OF CONCEPTUALIZATION IN THE EVALUATION OF SUSTAINABLE CONCRETE
AU - Henry, Michael
AU - Opon, Joel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s).
PY - 2022/3/3
Y1 - 2022/3/3
N2 - Improvement of the sustainability of concrete materials will be realized through the development of analytical tools that facilitate sustainable design and evaluation. However, these processes may be dependent on how sustainability is conceptualized for concrete. Conceptualization is the means by which sustainability is operationalized by creating a structure that connects a qualitative goal to its quantitative indicators. As there exists no established definition of sustainability for the concrete field, conceptualization is a source of uncertainty in the sustainability evaluation of concrete. This paper explores the role conceptualization plays in the evaluation of concrete material sustainability by analyzing its effects using multicriteria analysis and a sustainability indicator framework to quantify sustainability for concrete materials. Six analytical scenarios are explored using frameworks based on direct loading, the three pillars of sustainability, and the Sustainable Development Goals, together with two aggregation methods. It was found that the most sustainable concrete mix varied by scenario, but one concrete mix combining blast furnace slag and high grade recycled aggregates could be judged as the most sustainable due to its highest mean score and lowest variance across all analytical scenarios, which suggests it as the mix least sensitive to methodological choices on conceptualization and aggregation. Overall, however, the sustainability scores were highly correlated between the different scenarios.
AB - Improvement of the sustainability of concrete materials will be realized through the development of analytical tools that facilitate sustainable design and evaluation. However, these processes may be dependent on how sustainability is conceptualized for concrete. Conceptualization is the means by which sustainability is operationalized by creating a structure that connects a qualitative goal to its quantitative indicators. As there exists no established definition of sustainability for the concrete field, conceptualization is a source of uncertainty in the sustainability evaluation of concrete. This paper explores the role conceptualization plays in the evaluation of concrete material sustainability by analyzing its effects using multicriteria analysis and a sustainability indicator framework to quantify sustainability for concrete materials. Six analytical scenarios are explored using frameworks based on direct loading, the three pillars of sustainability, and the Sustainable Development Goals, together with two aggregation methods. It was found that the most sustainable concrete mix varied by scenario, but one concrete mix combining blast furnace slag and high grade recycled aggregates could be judged as the most sustainable due to its highest mean score and lowest variance across all analytical scenarios, which suggests it as the mix least sensitive to methodological choices on conceptualization and aggregation. Overall, however, the sustainability scores were highly correlated between the different scenarios.
KW - Conceptualization
KW - multi-criteria analysis
KW - sustainable design
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U2 - 10.14311/APP.2022.33.0219
DO - 10.14311/APP.2022.33.0219
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85130219392
T3 - Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings
SP - 219
EP - 225
BT - fib International Conference on Concrete Sustainability 2021
A2 - Sojkova, Katerina
A2 - Hajek, Petr
A2 - Fiala, Ctislav
PB - Czech Technical University in Prague
T2 - fib International Conference on Concrete Sustainability 2021, ICCS 2021
Y2 - 8 September 2021 through 10 September 2021
ER -