LCA assessment related to the evolution of the earthquake performance of a strategic structure

Several buildings and infrastructures, located in urban areas, are identified as strategic in the case of an earthquake event. This is the case of a water treatment plant which is currently built in Genoa, Italy, and which has been assessed for the scope of this research. Since the structure has been designed following the seismic design prescriptions, this work aims to provide a preliminary assessment of how the degradation mechanisms do affect its earthquake response. To this purpose, both chloride attack and carbonation are taken into account as main degradation mechanisms. Moreover, due to the importance of the water treatment plant, to develop a realistic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis, the earthquake resistance of the structure and its evolution over time as a function of the aforesaid degradation mechanisms, have been accounted as Serviceability Limit State to estimate the frequency of the maintenance activities needed in a timeframe of 100 years.