Environmental benefits of marine concrete structures

Abstract

Environmental sustainability and adaptation to climate change are two of several reasons floating structures are of great interest. Their resilience toward rising water levels and the possibility they allow to avoid additional land use are two specific factors that have influenced a flourishing of studies on floating structures and also several applications, for example in the transport field or in food and energy production. Moving from land to water implies taking care of a new complex environment throughout all the phases of the construction and during the whole life cycle of the structure. It is necessary to take care of the marine environment since the early phases of the conceptual design of the structure, to really consider the environment as one of the decisional information on the best-suited solution for each specific case, avoiding later costly mitigation measures and using the possibility to create environmental benefits with the change. The working party WP 1.2.3 of TG 1.2 of Fib presents in the present paper the potential environmental risks and potential benefits for concrete floating structures to promote an increased awareness of the marine environment with the involvement of different expertise from the early phases of the project.