Sustainable Decision Making in Civil Engineering

Authors

Michael H. Faber and Rüdiger Rackwitz

Abstract

The present paper deals with the intergenerational aspects of decision making in regard to lifecycle benefit-based design and maintenance planning for civil engineering facilities. Firstly, the concept of the Life Quality Index as a measure for assessing the feasibility of life saving activities as well as for including the societal cost consequences of fatalities into engineering decision making is introduced. Thereafter a general framework is outlined facilitating the quantification of sustainable decision making in an intergenerational perspective. Thereafter some basic results from renewal theory are provided and suggested as a framework for lifecycle benefit-based design and maintenance planning. The aspects of discounting in the context of sustainability are subsequently addressed including the problem of intergenerational discounting and overlapping generations. Finally, an example considering optimal design is given. In this example it is first outlined how the suggested decision making framework may be utilized to identify interest rates which if used in the usual setting of life cycle-based decision making will lead to sustainable decisions. Thereafter the significance of sustainable decision making is illustrated by a structural optimization problem.

Published in/by

Structural Engineering International (SEI), 14(3), August 2004, pp. 237-242.