Sustainable airport pavements

Abstract

Sustainability is increasingly becoming a priority issue, as well as the foundation for future prosperity, in the global aviation community. Pavement structures are an airport’s greatest asset and greatest liability, and along with their associated management systems, involve an intensive, expensive enterprise and consume massive amounts of nonrenewable resources at every airport. Pavement sustainability includes assessing various pavement strategies on the basis of eco-nomic, environmental, operational and societal impact throughout the pavement’s life cycle. Getting the most benefit for the least cost is a key attribute of pavement sustainability. This chapter presents an overview of the practices that are funda-mental to sustainable airside pavements, as well as some of the life cycle consid-erations. It includes pavement topics such as pavement condition, treatment types, traffic and climate, as well as life cycle cost, life cycle emissions and energy use and pavement management.