Pavement life cycle assessment

Abstract

Efficient use of fuel and material resources, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and control of environmental impacts have become important to the construction industry, including pavement engineering. Life cycle assessment, including carbon footprinting, is one important way of estimating the scale and environmental impacts of resource use and emissions to the environment. LCA results can be used for product development, benchmarking and policy making (e.g. investment decisions). Decision makers need to have confidence in the results of LCA studies and this will require that they are conducted in compliance with standards, in a consistent and transparent way. This chapter provides a short introduction to LCA before describing typical inputs and outputs required for pavement LCA and discussion of LCA standards as applied to road pavements. Some existing pavement LCA studies and tools are introduced and briefly reviewed. Finally, a framework for pavement LCA is suggested along with a checklist for conducting these studies and a note on challenges for developing the method in this area.