PROBABILISTIC LIFECYCLE ASSESSMENT AS A NETWORK-LEVEL EVALUATION TOOL FOR THE USE AND MAINTENANCE PHASES OF PAVEMENTS

摘要

Agencies that manage pavement networks have a role in mitigating the factors that affect global climatechange by managing their networks in such a way that these factors are minimized. Whereas muchresearch is still required in order to quantify the climate change impact of many variables relating topavements, the impact of pavement condition on vehicle fuel consumption has been clearly demonstratedin several recent research projects. In light of extensive research that has shown that pavementcharacteristics have a significant impact on vehicle fuel consumption, it can be shown that maintaining anetwork of pavements to minimize roughness can potentially limit the energy consumption of vehicletravelling along the pavement network. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate a method by whichtransportation agencies can measure the impact of their management decisions towards reducing theenergy consumption of their network. The use of an LCA to probabilistically quantify energyconsumption for a given set of expected maintenance actions defined at the network-level will bedemonstrated in this paper. Furthermore, it will be shown how the results of the LCA can be used toevaluate the energy consumption attributed to the pavement network over a defined time frame.