Abstract
For road pavements, hot-mix asphalt (HMA) and Portland cement concrete (PCC) are the materials most commonly used. In the selection of one of these materials, their economic performance and environmental performance are evaluated to determine which material exhibits excellent overall performance. However, no overall performance assessment exists in the construction community attributed to the lack of method providing easy-to-use and informative criteria for the decision-making process. Thus, in this paper, a new method that enables a comprehensive overall performance assessment is proposed, which is called Improved Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability. After an eco-economic life-cycle assessment is performed, along with environmental performance and economic performance evaluation, the best-fit pavement material can be selected. This method has proven that the use of HMA for road pavements reduces the environmental impact by 27.1%P (i.e., percentage point), whereas the use of PCC reduces cost by 19.7%P. The existing Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) method shows that the performances of both HMA and PCC were over-assessed by 4.6%P and 7.4%P, respectively, since the environmental performance and economic performance cannot be computed quantitatively by incorporating the environmental and cost impact index into existing BEES model, the Improved BEES method accurately projects environmental performance and economic performance attained through the application of the environmental and cost impact index, hence, encouraging more informed decision. This method facilitates in articulating a quality decision making through the consideration of both the environmental performance and economic performance, hence reducing unnecessary costs generated from the trial and error due to the use of the existing method. Moreover, it promotes the development of a sustainable construction technology.
Highlights
In Korea, road construction accounts for 33% of the financial investments of the social overhead capital (SOC) [1]
The research findings, which were obtained by performing the life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) on the national highway projects in Korea using the maintenance scenarios administered by the Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC) in the maintenance stage, are as follows: The LCA outputs confirm that the environmental impact attributed to the hot-mix asphalt (HMA) is 27.1%P smaller than that of Portland cement concrete (PCC); the LCCA
The overall performance (OP) that were obtained by inputting the LCA and LCCA outputs into the TOPSIS and Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) methods provide admissible evidence that these two methods identify the HMA pavement as the best solution
Summary
In Korea, road construction accounts for 33% of the financial investments of the social overhead capital (SOC) [1]. The difference in the GHG emission performance is greater than that in the ECP This indicates that in selecting the material for road pavements, the critical determinant that should be considered is the environmental performance (EVP). Because pavement is the most expensive item in road construction, it is important to select a method that is more sustainable in terms of both cost and environmental impact [4]. The development of a new method is desirable to identify the best alternative and to accurately reflect the impact of the EVP and ECP on the overall performance (OP). The multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) method is appropriate for obtaining meaningful results in the OP assessment of the economic and environmental impacts of construction projects [9]. It has been confirmed that by using such method, the best-fit construction material can be identified
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