Decision Framework to Balance Environmental, Technical, Logistical, and Economic Criteria When Designing Structures With Reused Components

Abstract

The reuse of structural components in new buildings has great potential to reduce the environmental impacts of the construction sector but remains uncommon practice. An obstacle to its wider implementation is the lack of robust assessment methods and decision-making tools that consider the full spectrum of benefits and drawbacks. This paper proposes a multi-criteria decision framework that builds on a simulated set of design alternatives with varying ratios of reused and new structural components. A set of performance criteria is presented, addressing procurement risks, construction technique complexity, environmental impacts, and project costs. As the independent criterion evaluations often deliver conflicting results, a multi-criteria decision analysis helps identify the most appropriate solution. The design of a steel Pratt truss is used as a case study to demonstrate the applicability of the framework. Different alternatives with reuse rates above 65% are recommended for each preference scenario, reducing between 35 and 45% of adverse environmental impacts in comparison to an equivalent design made of new elements only. The study underpins the principle that there is no trivial and unique best option when designing with reused components. Multi-criteria decision analyses applied to structures with varying reuse rates constitute a promising tool to support decision-makers.

Steel, a material to reuse

“…Several studies [13,[15][16][17] show that reuse of steel can drastically reduce the environmental footprint of new re ticulated structures, up to 60 % on average, provided that the distances between sites remain under control [15]. These gains are generally accompanied by an increase in the mass of the structure, explained by the fact that the reused sections are oversized.…”

Systematic Mapping of Circular Economy in Structural Engineering

“…After screening, a total of 80 publications were selected for further analysis, and additional relevant publications were identified using the snowballing technique, resulting in 11 articles [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Following a secondary snowballing process for the newly included publications, no additional relevant articles were found.…”

“…This may be the explanation for only 9% of the publications. However, the included Framework publications are highly relevant, featuring tools for facilitating structural circular design through strategic decision-making tools [20,29,30], the incorporation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in building projects [16], LCA within a Building Information Modeling (BIM) environment to create materials banks for reusing structural elements [31,32], BIM features for circular design [33], and predictions of reusability with machine learning techniques [34]. Illustratively, Bertin et al showcase a BIM-based material bank integrated approach for the anticipated reuse of structural elements, emphasizing LCA from design to construction.…”

“…Their work explores innovative computational approaches to structural circular design practices, employing methods such as mixed-integer linear programming for structural optimization [61,62], structural stock optimization [61][62][63], form finding, and parametric optimization [83], while emphasizing LCA [62,63] with a particular focus on truss structures [61,62,64,65,83]. Moving beyond Computational Design, Brutting and Fivet have also contributed to five additional publications on similar themes [20,49,74,85,86], establishing them as leading contributors in the publication collection.…”

Environmental and economic analysis of new construction techniques reusing existing concrete elements: two case studies

“…Prior to the industrial revolution, the reuse of bricks, stone, and wood was common practice [6]. Recently, the rising reuse of structural elements in industrialized countries has mainly been applied to wood and steel components, with very encouraging results in terms of environmental benefits [7], [8]. However, the largest construction waste stream today is concrete [9], the most consumed construction material on Earth [10].…”