The social dimension of bridge sustainability assessment - Impacts on users and the public

In the past, bridge design usually concentrated on structural aspects. The cultural significance of a bridge as well as the interaction with the surrounding environment were frequently neglected. Within the scope of a growing demand for a holistic assessment of building activities, many evaluation criteria going beyond the pure manufacturing cost come to the fore. They are, however, not completely developed for infrastructure buildings. While methods like life-cycle costing and life-cycle assessment are already applied for infrastructures, especially in the field of social assessment a lot of inaccuracies, assessment problems and methodological difficulties exist. This article summarizes different existing assessment approaches and tries to classify them. Furthermore, a method to quantify the impacts on users and the public by calculating the ma-croeconomic damage is proposed. Current developments of international standardization are incorporated in the considerations.