Climate change impacts on asphalt road pavement construction and maintenance: An economic life cycle assessment of adaptation measures in the State of Virginia, United States

Abstract

Pavement design and management practices must be adapted in response to future climate change. While many studies have attempted to identify different methods to adapt pavements to future climate conditions, the potential economic impacts of the adaptations still remain largely unquantified. This study presents the results of a comprehensive life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) aimed at quantifying the potential economic impacts of a climate adaptation method, in which an upgraded asphalt binder (Performance Grade PG 76-22) is used in the construction and maintenance of flexible pavement sections in lieu of the original binder (PG 70-22) for improved resistance against high temperatures. For each of three major Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) districts with different climates, three case studies consisting of typical interstate, primary, and secondary pavement sections were considered. The LCCA accounted for the costs incurred during the mixture's production, maintenance, and use phases of the pavement life cycle by explicitly considering future climate projections, pavement life-cycle performance, maintenance effects, and work zone user delays. The study concludes that pavements using the upgraded binder not only perform better over time but are also economically advantageous compared to those with the original binder under the conditions of the anticipated future climate conditions (2020-2039). K E Y W O R D S adaptation, climate change, climate model downscaling, flexible pavement, life-cycle cost analysis, maintenance effects

Appropriate Use of Lime in the Study of the Physicochemical Behaviour of Stabilised Lateritic Soil under Continuous Water Ingress

“…These engineering failures have been attributed to the high cost of excavating and replacing problematic soils with suitable materials and the strict legislative rules that govern the utilisation of these scarce natural resources for earthworks construction purposes. The adverse effect of rainfall-induced water ingress into pavement structural layers and its impact on the service life of flexible pavements and railway subgrades have been reported in recent literature [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

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

“…This approach is known as "dynamical downscaling". A moderately complex approach, termed "statistical downscaling", is based on developing a statistical model built on historic data, which is then employed to resolve the coarse GCM future projection data (Qiao et al 2019(Qiao et al , 2020. A sketch of the steps involved is exhibited in Figure 1.…”

“…From the extensive literature review of recent years, it was found that most studies in the civil engineering sector use a statistical downscaling approach for their study. This can be attributed to the fact that statistical downscaling is less complex and requires lower computational power than the nesting method (Valle et al 2017, Qiao et al 2019. Dynamical downscaling requires an understanding of complex physical theories and modelling construction to accurately perform the nesting of models.…”