Sustainability assessment of road pavement designs by integration of LCA and LCCA

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to propose a framework for sustainable assessment of pavement by the integration of LCA and LCCA methods. Additionally, a tool was developed that employs a multi-criteria decision-making process to determine the most sustainable pavement design alternative. The developed tool was applied in a case study involving 496 weighing modes to assess the impact of different maintenance intervention levels and the discount and traffic growth rates on the sustainability of design alternatives with varying maintenance treatments. The results of the analysis revealed that asphalt pavement with a stabilised base demonstrated superior sustainability, covering over 87% of the weight modes. Conversely, concrete pavement exhibited lower sustainability, representing only 6.5% of the weight modes. Additionally, among maintenance activities, preventive treatments exhibited heightened sustainability in scenarios with higher discount rates and lower traffic growth. These findings highlighted the importance of selecting the appropriate pavement type for sustainable infrastructure development.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• decision making
• LCA
• LCCA
• pavements

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to PRE (https://pre-sustainability.com) for their cooperation. Moreover, this paper only reflects the views of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).