Chapter 8: Complementary Sustainability Indicators

This chapter considers climate, carbon, circularity, resilience, lifetime nature and social value and explores links, to look at them in pairs, or groups, and aggregated to give a better understanding of sustainability and confirming that there are links between the indicators. Sustainability rating schemes are popular; we consider how they combine indicators; noting that it is the learning process engendered by these schemes that seem to be most important. We consider the aggregation of all indicators to show visually the sustainability of various bridges. The sustainability aggregation is also applied to various materials to see if there is a sustainable material; timber and steel appear to be the most consistent materials across the range of sustainability indicators. Considering the value of sustainability using a monetary value is common throughout the world, so we take a look at the UK Green Book method, with costs, benefits and discounting with a worked example. Finaly, we consider some important best practice for design, maintenance and replacement recommendations for sustainable bridges. This chapter will assist bridge professionals in addressing a number of the United Nations sustainability goals.