Systematic Review of Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Cost Analysis for Pavement and a Case Study

Wesam Salah Alaloul,Muhammad Faisal Javed,Muhammad Altaf,Amir Mosavi,Muhammad Ali Musarat

doi:10.3390/su13084377

Abstract

Development of the pavement network systems, which is inevitable due to the rapid economic growth, has increasingly become a topic of significant concern because of the severe environmental impacts of road expansion. For achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the policies and actions towards the pavements’ life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) must be carefully assessed. Consequently, the purpose of this review is to present an overview of LCA and LCCA used in pavement engineering and management. Through the quality control of PRISMA, fifty-five most relevant documents were extracted for a thorough investigation. The state of the art review reveals that a limited number of the papers considered environmental impacts of the pavements. Consequently, to assess the environmental impact cost, a conceptual framework was developed to better consider the LCA and LCCA on various aspects of the pavement projects including the sustainability aspects. Besides, a case study was given to validate the literature review towards proposing a novel framework for the incorporation of environmental impact cost.

Highlights

Published: 14 April 2021Mobility networks are expanding in a fast paced
The interpretation of the included papers, along with a philosophical framework, which indicates the impact of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) on the pavement projects
A systematic literature review was performed on 55 articles consist of research papers, conference papers, and review papers

Summary

Introduction

Sustainability and environmental aspects of the expansion of the road networks and pavements development have become the major concerns. In addition to the major attention towards pavement projects and economic growth, the severe environmental impacts had been widely neglected. The value of pavement projects is very immense, where the capital cost, but the operation, maintenance, and disposal cost need consideration [1]. With the immense growth of the pavement projects, the environment faces sustainability issue with toxic gaseous emissions, pollutant emissions, added fuel consumption, and noise pollution. To maintain the proper functionality of the project, the user phase of the pavement project needs timely upgrading, as it has the longest duration in the life cycle [2,3,4]

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