Global warming potential of pavements
By N. Santero, A. Horvath. 2009
200 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Pavements comprise an essential and vast infrastructure system supporting our transportation network, yet their impact on the environment is largely unquantified. Previous life-cycle assessments have only included a limited number of the applicable life-cycle components in their analysis. This research expands the current view to include eight different components: materials extraction and production, transportation, onsite equipment, traffic delay, carbonation, lighting, albedo, and rolling resistance. Using global warming potential as the environmental indicator, ranges of potential impact for each component are calculated and compared based on the information uncovered in the existing research. The relative impacts between components are found to be orders of magnitude different in some cases. Context-related factors, such as traffic level and location, are also important elements affecting the impacts of a given component. A strategic method for lowering the global warming potential of a pavement is developed based on the concept that environmental performance is improved most effectively by focusing on components with high impact potentials. This system takes advantage of the fact that small changes in high-impact components will have more effect than large changes in low-impact components.
Subfields: Civil and Structural Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87d97ecca4f3620c5a21884885d49be6cd412c50
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In Civil and Structural Engineering
Citations in the corpus
- Life-cycle assessment of high-speed rail: the case of California (2010, unknown): “Assuming 25 000 system-wide spaces (1000 per station), parking lot construction and maintenance energy requirements and emissions are included (PaLATE 2004, Santero and Horvath 2009).”
- Crumb Rubber Modifier in Road Asphalt Pavements: State of the Art and Statistics (2019, background): “Also, highway road pavement construction and maintenance consume significant amounts of materials and energy and produce large amounts of waste, which may have adverse effects on the environment and cause social perturbations [2].”
- Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional, Glass Powder, and Alkali-Activated Slag Concrete and Mortar (2014, background): “Interest in reducing GHG emissions and other environmental impacts for infrastructure systems has been increasing (Douglas et al. 1992; Santero and Horvath 2009).”
- Positive effects of vegetation: urban heat island and green roofs. (2011, background): “Just one research study has been conducted which took into account the global warming potential associated with pavement albedo (Santero and Horvath, 2009).”