Life cycle assessment of winter road maintenance

Vignisdóttir, Hrefna Rún; Ebrahimi, Babak; Booto, Gaylord Kabongo; O’Born, Reyn Joseph; Brattebø, Helge; Wallbaum, Holger; Bohne, Rolf André

doi:10.1007/s11367-019-01682-y

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…From this point of view, ensuring snow-and ice-free road is of great importance to achieve targets set by European Green Deal. However, winter road maintenance also yields a significant amount of greenhouse gases and other emissions, especially in cold regions, with a relatively high frequency of such activities [5]. Moreover, salt and other deicers, which are gritted on the road, pose a negative impact on groundwater and freshwater quality, and consequently also on biodiversity and human health [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, winter road maintenance also yields a significant amount of greenhouse gases and other emissions, especially in cold regions, with a relatively high frequency of such activities [5]. Moreover, salt and other deicers, which are gritted on the road, pose a negative impact on groundwater and freshwater quality, and consequently also on biodiversity and human health [5,6]. This represents a serious environmental problem taking into account that significant amounts of road salt and other chemicals are used to remove ice and snow accumulated on the road or to prevent icing and snow compaction on the roads [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, salt and other deicers, which are gritted on the road, pose a negative impact on groundwater and freshwater quality, and consequently also on biodiversity and human health [5,6]. This represents a serious environmental problem taking into account that significant amounts of road salt and other chemicals are used to remove ice and snow accumulated on the road or to prevent icing and snow compaction on the roads [5]. WRM agencies are under pressure to improve not only the effectiveness and efficiency of their activities but also to optimize the activities from the aspect of sustainability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Environmental impacts related with winter road maintenance in Norway were evaluated in a study by Vignisdottir et al [5]. They took into account the production and transportation of road salt (deicer) and vehicles for winter road maintenance and the operation of the winter road maintenance (use of the vehicles for plowing and salt spreading, associated with fuel and salt consumption).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pathway toward Sustainable Winter Road Maintenance (Case Study)

Rebec¹,

Turk²

2023

Life Cycle Assessment - Recent Advances and New Perspectives

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of winter road maintenance managed by an innovative road-weather information system and the impacts of vehicles passing the road during the snowstorm event. A case study refers to 10-hour lasting snowstorm event, considering a specific road section and application of a road-weather information management system to help winter road maintenance agency optimizing activities (salt gritting and/or plowing). Reliable information on the timing of the beginning of the snowstorm event affects (1) the activities of winter road maintenance, (2) the mobility of all vehicles passing the road, and (3) the fuel consumption of the vehicles. Since activities are optimized in case of preventive operation of winter road maintenance, less salt is needed overall. The road remains free of snow cover in case of preventive winter road maintenance operation, meaning that passenger cars and trucks pass the road at normal speed, without undesirable acceleration and braking caused by wheels slipping if snow accumulates on the road. Fuel consumption of vehicles passing salted and snow-free road remains unchanged, while fuel consumption increases in case of snow cover. Reduction of environmental burdens in case of such optimized winter road maintenance operation, is shown in this case study. The overall results of the comparative LCA analysis showed that the use of the road-weather information system in road traffic allows for as much as 25% reduction of environmental footprints. In the scenario where the winter service does not use information system the winter service also uses 40% more salt, which is also related with additional environmental impacts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Pathway toward Sustainable Winter Road Maintenance (Case Study)

Rebec¹,

Turk²

2023

Life Cycle Assessment - Recent Advances and New Perspectives

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“…For M&R phase, the CO 2 emissions related to maintenance construction work and the mitigation technologies have been the main concern in previous studies [8][9][10][11]. Ma et al [11] analyzed the CO 2 emissions of sixteen asphalt pavement maintenance technologies and claimed that microsurface and fog seal have the lowest GHG emissions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Work Zone Management on User Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Life Cycle Assessment on Highway Pavement Maintenance

Liu

Zhu

Wang

et al. 2022

Advances in Meteorology

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The higher contribution of traffic delay to environmental impacts is urging the highway agencies to take work zone management into the maintenance schemes decision-making. Aiming to understand the role of work zone management in user CO2 emissions reduction, this paper firstly developed a practical methodological framework of traffic delay-related CO2 emissions caused by highway maintenance based on a popular life cycle user cost analysis approach in regard of the microscopic vehicle operation analysis. The method was applied in an actual freeway flexible pavement with 15-year design life in Shaanxi Province, China, covering three types of preventive maintenance, correction maintenance, and rehabilitation. In addition, the impacts of key inputs of proposed method on work zone user CO2 emissions results were checked. The results show that traffic delay attributes to 29.4% of total CO2 emissions of the life cycle of highway pavement maintenance, and 51.8% of work zone user CO2 emissions result from preventive maintenance, especially from micro vehicle operations including speed change and queue near work zone (62% of total work zone user CO2 emissions). The work zone management alternative strategies related to less traffic volume or higher highway capacity including vehicle type limitation and the limited work zone speed have an advantage in reducing the work zone CO2 emissions over changing work zone length or work zone timing. The findings in this paper may present a useful tool and reference for robustly supporting the decision-making on highway maintenance carbon mitigation in work zone traffic.

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