Life Cycle Analysis of Road Construction and Use

Giampiero Trunzo, Laura Moretti and Antonio D’Andrea
Additional contact information
Giampiero Trunzo: Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00184 Rome, Italy
Laura Moretti: Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00184 Rome, Italy
Antonio D’Andrea: Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00184 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: Both the construction and use of roads have a range of environmental impacts; therefore, it is important to assess the sources of their burdens to adopt correct mitigation policies. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a useful method to obtain demonstrable, accurate and non-misleading information for decision-making experts. The study presents a “cradle to gate with options” LCA of a provincial road during 60 year-service life. Input data derive from the bill of quantity of the project and their impacts have been evaluated according to the European standard EN 15804. The study considers the impacts of the construction and maintenance stages, lighting, and use of the vehicles on the built road. The results obtained from a SimaPro model highlight that the almost half of impacts took place during the construction stage rather than the use stage. Therefore, the adoption of environmentally friendly road planning procedures, the use of low-impact procedures in the production of materials, and the use of secondary raw materials could have the largest potential for reducing environmental impacts.

Keywords: road construction; impact category; tunnel; bridge; embankment; trench; life cycle analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/2/377/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/2/377/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:2:p:377-:d:197280

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().