Flexible pavement performance and life cycle assessment incorporating climate change impacts

Abstract

Construction, maintenance and demolition of pavements are often considered the only activities impacting the environment. This paper shows that user emissions, influenced by factors such as road roughness and climate change, are also important measurements of pavement sustainability. The objective of this paper is to complete a life cycle assessment of a typical flexible pavement based on the climate change forecast by using road deterioration and user emissions analysed with the Highway Development and Management 4 (HDM-4) package. Data from South Africa were used to prove the concept. Results showed that user emissions dominate life cycle environmental impacts, and that gradual warming and drying of the atmosphere attributed to climate change is beneficial to pavement deterioration and emissions alike. Although invariably debate about the impact of climate change has negative connotations, and the reality of many negative impacts, road authorities in South Africa are fortunate that less rainfall will be beneficial.