Sustainability and circularity are becoming more important in the civil engineering sector. Both public and private parties in the sector are increasingly concerned about the impact of civil engineering projects on the environment, society, and the economy. In the Netherlands, the national objectives are to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% in 2030 and to have a fully circular economy by 2050. Coupling CO2 emission reduction objectives with circularity objectives can enhance and accelerate the sustainable development of the civil engineering sector. However, a major barrier for meeting sustainability and circularity objectives is that they have to compete with other objectives such as economic and structural performance, in decision making processes.
In this EngD project we collaborate with TNO in the Circular Structures project. The Circular Structures project aims to accelerate the transition towards sustainable and circular concrete in the civil engineering sector, via resource-based engineering and multi-objective design optimization of concrete structures. Methods, models and tools are developed within the project to increase the reuse of construction and demolition waste, and to support decision-making for simultaneously researching an optimum in circularity, environmental impact, economic performance and structural robustness. This EngD project is aims to develop an interactive method to support stakeholders with multi-objective decision-making, based on multi-objective design optimization for sustainable and circular structures.
The interactive method will be developed and evaluated with a design science research approach, and together with researchers and practitioners of the civil engineering sector and the multi-objective optimization field. The interactive decision-making method supports a group of multiple actors to make informed, well-balanced decisions which fit their preferences, in a collaborative and structured way.
Engineering Doctorate candidate: Susan Groenia