Life-cycle assessment of pavements. Part I: Critical review

Nicholas J. Santero, Eric Masanet and Arpad Horvath

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2011, vol. 55, issue 9, 801-809

Abstract: The rapidly expanding set of pavement life-cycle assessments (LCAs) available in the literature represents the growing interest in improving the sustainability of this critical infrastructure system. The existing literature establishes a foundational framework for quantifying environmental impact, but fails to deliver global conclusions regarding materials choices, maintenance strategies, design lives, and other best-practice policies for achieving sustainability goals. In order to comprehensively quantify environmental footprints and effectively guide sustainability efforts, functional units need to be standardized, systems boundaries expanded, data quality and reliability improved, and study scopes broadened. Improving these deficiencies will allow future studies to perform equitable and comparable assessments, thus creating a synergistic set of literature that continuously builds upon itself rather than generates independent and isolated conclusions. These improvements will place the body of pavement LCA research in a better position to confidently lead private industry and government agencies on successful paths towards sustainability goals.

Keywords: Life-cycle assessment (LCA); Pavements; Climate Change; Energy; Asphalt; Concrete (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344911000474
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:recore:v:55:y:2011:i:9:p:801-809

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2011.03.010

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().