Article Open access Lee-Sak An & Ho-Kyung Kim Scientific Reports 15 , Article number: 725 (2025) Cite this article Metrics Abstract To enhance sustainability and resilience against climate change in infrastructure, a quantitative evaluation of both environmental impact and cost is important within a life cycle framework. Climate change effects can lead performance deterioration in bridge components during their operational phase, highlighting the necessity for a risk-based evaluation process aligned with maintenance strategies. This study employs a two-phase life cycle assessments (LCA) framework. First, risk assessments are conducted to evaluate the impact of climate change on steel plate girder bridges and prestressed concrete (PSC) girder bridges under identical structural conditions. The reduction in flexural strength of steel plate girders and PSC girders due to changes in environmental variables such as temperature and relative humidity, induced by various climate change scenarios, was evaluated analytically. Subsequently, life cycle environmental impact and cost assessments were performed, including maintenance outcomes derived from risk assessments. The findings revealed that the environmental impact and cost could increase by approximately 12.4% when climate change is considered, compared to scenarios where it is not taken into account. Sensitivity analyses were performed to identify the key factors influencing environmental impact and cost. The analysis determined that the frequency of preventive maintenance, the recycling rate, and environmental cost coefficient weight in the life cycle assessment significantly affected the results. Introduction In the context of global climate change, the relationship between the infrastructure industry and its environmental impact has been a focal point of discussions, addressing key concerns such as energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions 1 . The crux of mitigating the environmental impact within the infrastructure industry lies in the engineer’s commitment to sustainable decisions in conceptual design and maintenance strategies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) serves as a […]