An Index for Assessing the Environmental Impact of Pavement Maintenance Operations on the Motorway Network: The Environmental Asphalt Rating

Abstract

In recent years, attention on pavement management is increasing and the research is focused on the development of innovative protocols and comparative evaluation of maintenance alternatives. Among these, the concept of sustainability related to the management of pavements is gaining ground and, more generally, infrastructure and the quantification of environmental impact as a combination of emissions and energy consumption. To properly estimate the environmental impact of different pavement interventions, a calculation methodology is presented in this paper that can summarize all the different aspects of environmental impact for both the production and paving phases of asphalt mixtures. The innovative approach takes into account also the need to evaluate new methodologies and new production processes in order to compare these new technologies with already used materials and processes. The result of this paper is a dimensionless index based on Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) certification which has been named Environmental Asphalt Rating (EAR) with weighting factors and performance coefficients fine-tuned on the European scenario. The EAR computation wants to be a certified procedure ensuring the repeatability and the quality of the environmental evaluation but also able to include in the evaluation noise and mechanical characteristics of the pavement. Several applications are expected such as the design stage of maintenance operations, and awarding criteria in tenders of monitoring phases of the pavement maintenance interventions.