Life Cycle Assessment for Pavement Sustainable Development: Critical Review

Abstract

Certainly, one of the most cost effective and comprehensive infrastructure assets of the build environment is road infrastructure. The environmental impacts of this asset during its life-cycle drive researchers to create a foundational framework to quantify these effects. Life cycle assessment (LCA), a method for the assessment of all modules in a life cycle, has been examined to evaluate all the environmental modules and components of road projects due to constraints of environmental assessments. The enthusiasm for enhancing the sustainable development of basic infrastructure leads to quick expansion on pavement life cycle assessment. An audit of applicable published LCA studies has recognized that environmental modules, such as the usage module (rolling resistance of pavement, carbonation, and albedo), end of life (EOL) module, and components such as traffic congestion during the construction module are not regarded in most of the articles. These modules potentially have the same environmental impact as other regularly considered modules such as materials, transportation, and construction. The goal of this study is to recognize shortfalls in the fields that bolster pavement LCA, to prepare a comprehensive and straight forward methodology, and to provide a basis on which related studies can move forward

Life cycle assessment of pavement construction: A case study

“…The usage and EOL stages often get less attention compared to other phases. Babashamsi et al [13] state that the use phase is often ignored due to uncertainty and insufficient information in terms of environmental impacts affecting pavement such as rolling resistance, albedo, carbonation, and leachate. Table 1 summarises the system boundaries considered by some of the highly cited pavement LCA studies.…”

“…The study considers a 'cradle-to-grave' scenario including a typical maintenance regime and follows the life cycle stages highlighted in Figure 1, defined as a partial LCA. The other scenarios in the use stage are omitted as there is currently incomplete supporting information to include environmental impacts of these phases [13]. The functional unit in this study, which represents the reference unit that measures the performance of the indicators, is one square-metre of pavement for the cradle-to-grave approach.…”

Recycling Toward Sustainable Pavement Development:end-of-Life Considerations in Asphalt Pavement

“…Agencies are interested in reducing energy consumption, material and transportation costs, and GHG emissions seek out effective pavement recycling strategies. Babashamsi et al [7] stated that the end of life module (EOL) has been abounded by numerous of the past LCA studies (just considered 4 out of 30). The pavement can be landfilled, recycled, or covered and turned into a steady base layer for following pavement structure.…”

Materials role in pavement design and its impacts in LCA of road construction and use phase

“…Recent review works revealed the significant increase in the research on LCA applied to road construction projects in the last twenty years [1][2][3][4]. In fact, this shows the enhancement of the sustainable strategy on the infrastructure.…”