International Symposium on Life Cycle Assessment and Construction: Civil Engineering and Construction

Numerous research activities about LCA applied to buildings and more recently to civil engineering, have risen over the past decades. Environmental stakes are particularly important in construction because any initial decision always has long term consequences. In addition, the construction sector both generates and recycles huge amounts of wastes, it is generally considered as an important contributor to climate change and induces irreversible changes in local environments. To face these stakes, industries invest into so-called “green innovations”, and national or local public authorities are demanding scientifically based decision support such as LCA.

At present, this LCA research appears to be fragmented between LCA practitioners in various construction fields, and LCA methodologists. However, LCA practitioners in the construction sector share identical methodological questions. For example, drastic variations that inevitably occur between the early and operational stages of construction projects, have conducted many research institutions to develop their own dedicated LCA software tools. These tools are however rarely comparable because they generally use different databases and assumptions. Only close cooperation between LCA methodologists and construction scientists, can lead to relevant methodological developments and harmonized assessments.

The symposium aims at grouping disparate research communities to create a forum for the exchange of recent developments and research results amongst researchers. It also aims at providing an insight into societal demands in the civil engineering and buildings sectors. The symposium will thus be organized over three days. The two first days will be devoted to scientific presentations; the last day will deal with public policies and standardization in the field, on the base of invited presentations.

In that context, IFSTTAR (resulting from the merger of LCPC and INRETS) and CSTB, in partnership with the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM), the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE), and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) invite you to participate and submit a paper to the International Symposium on LCA and Construction 2012.