Network aspects of pavement management optimization using life cycle assessment

Author(s): C. A. Gosse, A. F. Clarens
Paper category: symposium
Book title: International Symposium on Life Cycle Assessment and Construction – Civil engineering and buildings
Editor(s): A. Ventura and C. de la Roche
Print ISBN: 978-2-35158-127-8
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-128-5
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Pages: 108 – 115
Total Pages: 8
Language: English

Abstract: Conventional LCA is not especially well suited for evaluating the environmental impacts of public infrastructure networks. Heterogeneous asset types and competing public policy goals hinder scope and functional unit identification. Both LCA and life cycle costing (LCC) consider assets individually and, for analysis of networks, assume that costs and impacts scale linearly. As maintenance budgets have declined in terms of purchasing power, and transportation infrastructure has gotten older, planners and engineers have begun to focus more on LCC minimization. Without appropriate and integrated LCA tools, intensive LCC could shift burdens to non-monetized externalities like greenhouse gas emissions. This work describes a general multi-objective optimization framework to identify a set of network-wide asset-specific investment plans non-dominated with respect to public user cost, public agency cost, and environmental impact. The framework is applied for the case of planning long-term pavement maintenance optimization by a department of transportation. To shrink the solution space, Pareto fronts (PFs) were computed for each pavement segment. Selecting a network-wide solution based on individual PFs produces a good solution but an integrated network-wide optimization produces superior results.

Keywords: asset management, optimal design, green infrastructure

Online publication: 2012
Publication Type: full_text
Public price (Euros): 0.00