Selected road condition, vehicle and freight considerations in pavement life cycle assessment (original) (raw)

Effect of Methodological Choices on Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment

The application of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in evaluating the environmental impact of pavement systems has increased over the past two decades. The ability to quantify environmental impact over the lifespan of a pavement gives valuable insight to stakeholders in the transportation industry when making decisions about pavement planning, design, construction, and management. As a methodology, LCA is governed by a set of rules and preferences that are uniquely decided in the goal and scope of each study. Some of these choices refer to general LCA methodological elements such as those pertaining to the system boundary, cut-off criteria, or data quality requirements. Other choices are specific to the product system, such as the treatment of traffic growth or asphalt binder allocation for pavement LCA. When conducting an LCA, it is important to understand how rules and choices affect the results of the study.

Environmentally appraising different pavement and construction scenarios: A comparative analysis for a typical local road

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2015

The aim of this work is to carry out a comparative analysis of environmental impacts for different scenarios of a typical local road. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the modeling tool used to quantify and characterize comparative environmental impacts. In carrying out this specific application of the LCA, different road construction techniques were considered with regards to the whole structure and compared in order to identify the best alternative in terms of environmental sustainability.

Comparison of Life-Cycle Assessment Tools for Road Pavement Infrastructure

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Road pavements have considerable environmental burdens associated with their initial construction, maintenance, and usage, which have led the pavement stakeholder community to join efforts to understand and mitigate these negative effects better. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a versatile methodology for quantifying the effect of decisions regarding the selection of resources and processes. However, there is a considerable variety of tools for conducting pavement LCA. This paper provides the pavement stakeholder community with insights into the potential differences in the life-cycle impact assessment results of a pavement by applying American and European LCA tools, namely, PaLATE Version 2.2, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute–University of California asphalt pavement LCA model, GaBi, DuboCalc, and ECORCE-M, to a Spanish pavement reconstruction project. Construction and maintenance life-cycle stages were considered in the comparison. On the basis of the impact assessment m...

Environmental and economic assessment of pavement construction and management practices for enhancing pavement sustainability

Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2017

Stakeholders in the pavement sector have been seeking new engineering solutions to move towards more sustainable pavement management practices. The general approaches for improving pavement sustainability include, among others, reducing virgin binder and virgin aggregate content in HMA and WMA mixtures, reducing energy consumed and emissions generated in mixtures production, applying in-place recycling techniques, and implementing preventive treatments. In this study, a comprehensive and integrated pavement life cycle costing-life cycle assessment model was developed to investigate, from a full life cycle perspective, the extent to which several pavement engineering solutions, namely hot in-plant recycling mixtures, WMA, cold central plant recycling and preventive treatments, are efficient in improving the environmental and economic dimensions of pavement infrastructure sustainability, when applied either separately or in combination, in the construction and management of a road pavement section located in Virginia, USA. Furthermore, in order to determine the preference order of alternative scenarios, a multicriteria decision analysis method was applied. The results showed that the implementation of a recycling-based maintenance and rehabilitation strategy where the asphalt mixtures are of type hot-mix asphalt containing 30% RAP, best suits the multidimensional and conflicting interests of decision-makers. This outcome was found to be robust even when different design and performance scenarios of the mixtures and type of treatments are considered.

Assessing the Environmental Impact Exerted by Roads in "Operative" Conditions -A Highway Case-Study

The work arises from the consideration that the environmental impact of a road cannot be limited to the analysis of materials constituting it, even if correctly analyzed in their life cycle, because roads are designed mainly to accomplish well-established requests of transportation demand of people and freights. These considerations must be properly taken into account, when analysing the environmental performance of the road infrastructures, by properly accounting for the vehicles' pollutant emissions. On the other hand, a given road is comprised of the pavement and subgrade; it also includes several different components and accessories (e.g. road marking, drainages, safety barriers, etc.) that contribute to set a road infrastructure in operative conditions. As a matter of fact, apparently, unlike pavement materials and traffic flow, only a limited attention has been paid in the scientific literature to roadside components. In the present work the environmental pressure of these...

Life Cycle Environmental Assessment Using Athena Pavement LCA Tool: A Manitoba Case Study

2016

Environmental sustainability is one of the four strategic priorities of the Department of Manitoba Infrastructure. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is acknowledged as one of the most comprehensive ways to evaluate the environmental impacts of different strategies associated with a physical feature. The Athena Pavement LCA software for highways is a tool that can be used to assess the environmental impacts of materials production, construction, and maintenance & rehabilitation activities over a given life cycle period. The software is also capable of modeling pavement vehicle interactions (PVI) to assess the environmental impact of traffic use phases of a roadway due to pavement surface roughness and deflection. This paper presents comparisons of the environmental impacts of various alternative strategies for a concrete pavement to demonstrate the opportunity to optimize pavement performance and environmental impacts. The concrete pavement constructed in 2015 on Manitoba Provincial Truck Highway 75 (PTH 75) has been used as a case study. A matrix of alternative concrete mix, pavement design, and maintenance and rehabilitation strategies has been used to compare environmental impacts of those alternative options. The analysis presented is expected to assist Manitoba Infrastructure and other agencies to better understand and weigh the environmental implications of alternative roadway materials, design as well as construction, maintenance and rehabilitation practices and select the best strategy considering pavement performance and preservation of our natural environment.

Life Cycle Analysis for Sustainability Assessment of Road Projects

Road infrastructure has been considered as one of the most expensive and extensive infrastructure assets of the built environment globally. This asset also impacts the natural environment significantly during different phases of life e.g. construction, use, maintenance and end-of-life. The growing emphasis for sustainable development to meet the needs of future generations requires mitigation of the environmental impacts of road infrastructure during all phases of life e.g. construction, operation and end-of-life disposal (as required). Life-cycle analysis (LCA), a method of quantification of all stages of life, has recently been studied to explore all the environmental components of road projects due to limitations of generic environmental assessments. The LCA ensures collection and assessment of the inputs and outputs relating to any potential environmental factor of any system throughout its life. However, absence of a defined system boundary covering all potential environmental components restricts the findings of the current LCA studies. A review of the relevant published LCA studies has identified that environmental components such as rolling resistance of pavement, effect of solar radiation on pavement (albedo), traffic congestion during construction, and roadway lighting & signals are not considered by most of the studies. These components have potentially higher weightings for environment damage than several commonly considered components such as materials, transportation and equipment. This paper presents the findings of literature review, and suggests a system boundary model for LCA study of road infrastructure projects covering potential environmental components.

Eco-burden in pavement maintenance: Effects from excess traffic growth and overload

2014

Road pavement is designed to support certain usage conditions. However, many abnormal usages above regulated level often happen. Excess traffic growth is considered as a factor influencing road life-performance. Overload phenomenon has also long been recognized as an unexpected force causing extreme decrease of road performance. This study investigates the eco-burden effect of road construction in its maintenance phase along with the influence of above factors in shortening road life-cycle. Because of that, life-cycle assessment (LCA) is used to calculate the eco-burden impact. Furthermore, they are two different options taken for pavement materials: hot-mix and recycled asphalt. They are compared in order to provide comprehensive investigation results for decision makers. Eco-Indicator 99 is used as the impact database in order to standardize calculation processes. Seven sections of Pantura (Pantai Utara – North Beach) road, Indonesia, are picked up to be the case studies as a basis in understanding correlation between all factors to eco-burden impact in road maintenance. This study concludes that each of excess traffic growth and overload is positively correlated with the increase of eco-burden impact. The more extreme shortening of road life-cycle, the more eco-burden will be produced, and it will increase faster in polynomial functions. By looking at previous studies which tend to focus on eco-burden in ideal condition of road life-cycle, this study throws new light on the effects of abnormal phenomena on road usage which shorten pavement life-performance as well as increase eco-burden impacts.

Economic and Environmental Considerations for Pavement Management Systems

European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 2015

Sustainability and specifically environmental factors are emerging as prominent issues in engineering decision-making. Environmental parameters are not considered part of current pavement management systems for many road authorities, despite having duties such as pavement construction and maintenance which can greatly affect the environmental impact of a project. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of integrating environmental performance measures into pavement management process. To illustrate these concepts, a sustainable pavement management framework is proposed. Background information is given on life-cycle assessment (LCA). The proposed framework life-cycle and LCA phases are discussed, in addition to the system's data and data sources. A list describing the data used for environmental calculations is included, Special attention is given to recycled materials and environmental measures. Concluding remarks suggest different contexts for potential applications of the proposed framework, together with network tools that can be used to meet user needs and applications as well as to address feasibility and cost.