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Introduction

3psLCCA (Three Pillars of Sustainability Life Cycle Cost) is a graphical, bridge-specific Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCCA) tool that integrates the economic, environmental, and social pillars of sustainability into a single, monetary decision-making metric.

Why 3psLCCA?​

Conventional bridge design decisions often prioritize minimizing initial construction cost while overlooking impacts that accrue over the full service life - operation, inspection, maintenance, rehabilitation, hazard-induced repairs (e.g. after earthquakes or extreme events), and decommissioning. These activities carry significant economic, environmental, and social consequences.

Existing tools address these dimensions in isolation:

  • General-purpose environmental LCA tools (openLCA, One Click LCA, SimaPro) are not bridge-specific and do not integrate economic or social dimensions.
  • Bridge-specific tools such as BridgeLCC focus mainly on economic evaluation, while GreenBridge focuses on environmental assessment with limited LCCA integration.

3psLCCA closes this gap by combining all three pillars into a single bridge-specific workflow, expressed in monetary terms so that alternatives can be compared directly.

What the tool does​

  • Estimates total life cycle cost of a bridge across its service life.
  • Analyzes cost distribution across life cycle stages (construction, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, hazard-induced repair, decommissioning).
  • Assesses environmental impacts (e.g. carbon emissions) in monetary terms.
  • Evaluates social/user-related costs (e.g. disruption costs).
  • Compares alternative design options on a consistent, unified basis.

Scope​

The current implementation supports all bridge types, with a primary focus on steel and prestressed concrete (PSC) girder short-span bridges. The default database is developed for India, but the tool allows users to define project-specific parameters and databases for other regions. Its modular architecture is designed to extend to additional bridge typologies, span ranges, and region-specific databases over time.

Where to go next​

On this page