Toward a framework for sustainable reinforced concrete structures based on Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures are increasingly required to satisfy not only safety, serviceability, and durability requirements, but also environmental, economic, and social performance targets over the life cycle. This creates competing objectives for which prescriptive approaches and single‐objective optimization are no longer sufficient. This paper examines Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) as a decision‐support framework for sustainability‐oriented structural decision‐making. It reviews the regulatory and life‐cycle assessment background that illustrates sustainability requirements in structural engineering, discusses the main MCDA and multi‐objective approaches adopted in RC and infrastructure applications, and synthesizes the main literature trends in the field. On this basis, it synthesizes a life‐cycle‐oriented organization of sustainability criteria across environmental, economic, social, and technical‐functional dimensions, and frames their use within MCDA‐based workflows for design, maintenance, retrofit, and procurement. The paper provides a structured reference for supporting transparent and technically grounded life‐cycle decisions in RC systems.