Life cycle assessment of a novel fired smart clay brick monitoring system for masonry buildings

In recent years, a mass of scientific literature has been developed in the attempt of providing guidance to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve the Earth's natural resources. Several contributions showed that the life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful methodology to evaluate the performance of a service or a good by means of a comprehensive approach, particularly, in a high energy demanding industry such as the construction sector. In this context, the present study tackles the environmental sustainability of a novel piezoresistive Smart Brick monitoring sensor, for new and existing masonry buildings. The environmental footprint of two brick prototypes is compared to that of a regular strain gauges-based monitoring setup in the frame of the ReCiPe evaluation method. Metals use can be pointed as hot spot. Results show that Smart Brick prototypes, due to their longer durability (considering 50-year's lifespan), are associated to 50% lower damage oriented impacts compared to the traditional solution in a life cycle (LC) perspective. This result is critical towards large scale implementation of smart bricks, given that environmental impact of sensing systems is one of the major current bottlenecks that are still limiting the application potential of structural health monitoring technologies.