Midpoint Approach

The midpoint approach of the ReCiPe method provides a complete environmental profile of each stage of the bridge life-cycle represented by 18 impact categories: agricultural land occupation (ALO), climate change (GWP), fossil depletion (FD), freshwater ecotoxicity (FEPT), freshwater eutrophication (FEP), human toxicity (HTP), ionizing radiation (IRP), marine ecotoxicity (MEPT), marine eutrophication (MEP), metal depletion (MD), natural land transformation (NLT), ozone depletion (OD), particulate matter formation (PMF), photochemical oxidant formation (POFP), terrestrial acidification (TAP), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TEPT), urban land occupation (ULO) and water depletion (WD). This large amount of information makes the results difficult to interpret. Although it is difficult to achieve a global assessment of the environmental impact of the bridge with the information obtained by means of the midpoint approach, it is very helpful to obtain more accurate knowledge of the impact of each category and the contribution of each process to the different impact categories.

As explained above, the data used for the environmental impact assessment do not correspond with the real data. This implies that the uncertainty associated with the different products or processes should be taken into account to obtain more realistic results. Table 3 shows the mean and coefficient of variance of each impact category for each bridge life-cycle phase. Although it is not possible to carry out a global assessment for each bridge life-cycle phase, it is possible to obtain information about the phase in which each impact category is the most significant and the variance of the information obtained. In this way, it can be observed that the manufacturing phase is the phase in which there are a higher number of impact categories with the highest contribution followed by the use and maintenance phase. The impact categories with the highest contribution in the manufacturing phase are ALO, GWP, FEPT, FEP, HTP, IRP, MEPT, MD, TETP, ULO and WD and the impact categories with the highest contributions to the use and maintenance phase are FD, MEP, NLT, ODP, PMFP, POFP and TAP. Neither the construction phase nor the end of life phase has impact categories with the highest contribution. All of this can be seen better in Figures 5 and 6, in which the bars represent the ratio of the contribution of each impact category to each life-cycle phase in relation to the highest contribution. In addition, Table 3 shows the variance of each result. In this way, although the GWP has the highest variance in the manufacturing phase, the manufacturing phase is the one in which more impact categories have the lowest variance, with a mean of 7.13%. The construction phase has the highest mean of variances (17.15%), followed by the end-of-life phase (13.16%) and the use and

maintenance phase (10.58%). Furthermore, the impact category with the highest coefficient of variation is the ULO (17.28%) and the impact category with the lowest coefficient of variation is the ALO (8.04%).

Another type of information that can be obtained by the midpoint approach is the contribution of the different products or processes to each impact category. For illustrative purposes, only three of the most popular impact categories (GWP, OD and PMF) will be studied more exhaustively and will display the contribution of the different products or processes to each bridge life-cycle phase. Figures 7–10 show the contributions of the most important processes for each bridge life-cycle phase. Figure 7 corresponds to the manufacturing phase and it is possible to see that the most important associated processes are the cement production, steel production and transport. Cement production makes the highest contribution to the GWP, namely 46.49% of the total but in the PMF and OD categories, steel production has the higher ratio with percentages of 76.14 and 57.44% respectively. Furthermore, it can be seen that, although the GWP has a low percentage of other processes (6.07%), the cement production, steel production and transport represent a larger part of the environmental impact of this bridge life-cycle phase. Figure 8 corresponds to the construction phase and the processes that lead to practically all the environmental impacts are those due to the manipulation of fresh concrete and the transport and elevation of the precast beams. Figures 9 and 10 show the use and maintenance phase and end-of-life phase, in which the CO2 fixed is taken into account. In the GWP impact category, it can be seen that there is a positive impact. On one hand, in the use and maintenance phase, the amount of CO2 fixed is much lower than the CO2 eq produced by the maintenance activities and the traffic detour because the concrete surface in contact with the environment represents a very low proportion of the total of amount of concrete in the bridge. The percentage of the CO2 fixed is −3.84%, while the percentages of maintenance activities and traffic detour are 89.95% and 13.89%, respectively, adding a total of 100% due to that the global GWP impact in this phase is positive. The ratio of the contribution of the maintenance activities and traffic detour can be modified considerably in function of the features of the traffic diversion (distance, average daily traffic and percentage of trucks). On the other hand, in the end-of-life phase, the amount of CO2 fixed is higher ( −254.05%) than the CO2 eq produced by the demolition activities (22.40%), the waste treatment (36.21%) and the associated transport (96.18%). The total contribution of the processes in the end-of-life phase is negative, adding a total of −100%. In the other impact categories (PMF and OD), the maintenance activities and transport make the major contribution to each bridge life-cycle.


**Table 3.** Midpoint approach.

**Figure 5.** Impact categories of manufacturing and construction stage.

**Figure 6.** Impact categories of use and end of life stage.

**Figure 7.** Manufacturing phase.

**Figure 8.** Construction phase.

**Figure 9.** Use and maintenance phase.

**Figure 10.** End-of-life phase.
