A Framework for Introducing Climate-Change Adaptation in Pavement Management

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions have caused global temperatures to rise since the mid-20th century accompanied by sea-level rise (SLR). Temperature increases and SLR-induced groundwater rise have been shown to cause premature pavement failure in many roadway structures. Hybrid bottom-up/top-down (hybrid) adaptation approaches have shown promise by initially investigating an asset’s response to incremental environmental change and then identifying the timing of critical effects for budgetary planning. This improves practitioners’ understanding of the asset’s climate resiliency and informs adaptation-plan development to minimize both cost and risk. In this study, a hybrid approach to pavement adaptation with climate-change-induced temperature and groundwater rise is demonstrated at a case-study site in coastal New Hampshire. The hot-mix-asphalt (HMA) thickness that achieves a minimum of 85% reliability is calculated for 70 combinations of incremental temperature and groundwater rise. Increasing the base-layer thickness improves resiliency against rising temperatures, but rising groundwater diminishes this improvement demonstrating that both HMA and base-layer thickness increases are needed. Thirteen adaptation pathways are evaluated for pavement performance, life-cycle costs, and road-surface inundation over a 60-year pavement management period. A stepwise and flexible adaptation plan is developed that includes HMA overlays with prescribed thickness and application timing, base-layer rehabilitation options, and re-evaluation opportunities.

Integration, Application and Importance of Collaboration in Sustainable Project Management

“…Moreover, clients' procedures when managing maintenance projects during the long life cycle of a transport infrastructure system may strongly influence sustainability aspects. For example, these procedures may both directly affect everyday lives of many people, and the environmental impact arising from factors such as use of heavy machinery and asphalt [58,59]. Another major reason for selecting the focal case was that it involved a collaborative business arrangement that has not been previously applied in Sweden.…”

Flexible Pavements and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Review and Implications

“…They concluded that variabilities in precipitation and, thus, in soil moisture, can reduce road design reliability, although the climate change signal may be minimal in terms of precipitation. Similar studies were also conducted for the USA, Canada, and Egypt [68][69][70][71][72][73].…”

Climate change impact and adaptation for highway asphalt pavements: a literature review

“…In the past decade, a number of researchers have looked for ways to tweak pavement parameters to better combat the fluctuating climate conditions. Temperature, precipitation, incoming percent of sunshine, humidity, wind speed, and groundwater levels are the climate factors that alter pavement performance, design, and service life (Knott et al 2019a). In addition, the other factors such as permafrost thaw, freezing index, and freeze and thaw cycles significantly influence the flexible pavement in the Northern part of Canada (Maadani et al 2021).…”