A Methodological Approach to Evaluate Structural Building Projects Through the Environmental Economic Index

Abstract

The construction industry has a relevant social and economic function and has become fundamental to achieving the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This industry contributes significantly to global CO2 emissions due to embodied and operating energy. There are methodologies to evaluate them, but they lack integration with other variables. In the case of buildings and assessing safety and costs, environmental assessment needs to be incorporated; current methodologies are complex to implement and, in general, costly in terms of economic and human resources. This research proposes the Environmental Economic Index (EEI) to evaluate structural building projects and support decision-making, obtained from a simplified methodology. In the case study, located in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, the same building structure was designed to subject to different operational loads and lateral forces, with structural concrete and structural steel. For this building, the concrete structure subject to seismic actions had a better result when estimating the EEI and comparing it with the other structural alternatives. The contribution of this work is to develop a simplified methodology to evaluate structural projects in the design phase, which integrates economic, environmental, and safety variables and supports decision-making in designers and real estate developers.