Sviluppo di un metodo integrato di valutazione dell‘impatto su sostenibilità e resilienza per le industrie dell‘acciaio del settore delle costruzioni

Sustainability and resilience concepts are currently dominating the research trends for building design, but also for the management, development, and production of the construction industries to stay on track along the decarbonization roadmap to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. On one hand, sustainability has become a global concern in the second half of the 20th century with the growing recognition of the detrimental impacts of economic development on the environment and human health. On the other hand, even though the concept of resilience is still considered novel, its very first definition appeared previously than sustainability’s, around 40 years ago, and relies on the ability of a system to withstand an unusual perturbation and to recover efficiently from damage induced by such perturbation. Both concepts can be measured with techniques for life cycle analysis and decision-making, and they can minimize impacts and risks on multiple spheres, such as environmental, social, and economic ones, promoting and boosting an optimization of the overall construction value chain. In this framework and focusing on the construction steel industries which are responsible for around 5% of CO2 emissions in the EU and 7% globally, the original contribution of this paper is the development of an integrated assessment approach, the so-called SARIA, to evaluate the combined level of sustainability and resilience of their businesses with the final aim is to identify innovation paths for those segments of the construction industry boosting green and innovative technologies, integrating data and processes, and becoming agile enough to overcome challenges in order to be in line with the EU’s climate targets. The research has been conducted in collaboration with the Sustainability Commission of Fondazione Promozione Acciaio and the results presented are the first proof of concept of the developed methodology, under a test phase on selected industries.