Sustainable Concrete Infrastructures Rehabilitation: Comparing Interventions with Multi-criteria Decision Analysis

The lack of maintenance activities to prevent and reduce deterioration and collapse, on a local and global scale, is one of the main problems affecting the infrastructures. This research focuses on the selection of a rehabilitation intervention on an R.C. bridge by evaluating the sustainability of various alternatives using an innovative methodology. Through multi-criteria decision analysis (e.g., AHP, MIVES and TOPSIS), a procedural approach is developed to evaluate the whole Life Cycle Assessment of the maintenance work of a bridge column. Using environmental, economic, social and structural parameters, the following four different interventions on a column of the Brabau Bridge in Italy are designed, assessed and ranked: i. complete substitution of the pier; ii. replacement of damaged longitudinal bars by machined bars and UHPFRC strengthening; iii. longitudinal and transverse wrapping with CFRP; iv. concrete jacketing. The proposed methodology seems to be a promising procedure to select the optimal rehabilitation technique considering the sustainability-related issues.