Towards the implementation of Life Cycle Management for road pavements in Europe

The evaluation of the Life Cycle of products, processes and projects has a significant potential for enhancing sustainability. This is also true for road pavements. However, the current usage of Life Cycle-based impact assessment techniques is limited and exhibits inconsistency across studies, primarily due to the absence of a specific methodology tailored for this sector. This research addresses this gap by focusing on the harmonization of sustainability assessment practices through life-cycle assessment, in order to facilitate its application in road infrastructure projects and to achieve more consistent and comparable studies. The proposed methodology, once established, will serve as a valuable guide, providing practitioners in Europe with a step-by-step procedure for effective implementation and aiding stakeholders in incorporating Sustainability Assessment into their practices towards a Life Cycle-based Management of the asset. The research included also an additional investigation to improve important aspects of the proposed guidelines. On one hand, this work was the first ever attempt aimed at exploring the possibility of introducing Social Life Cycle Assessment within a sustainability assessment framework for the road pavement sector. The work allowed identifying a possible list of social impact indicators for pavement materials in Germany and Italy. Moreover, with the aim of improving data availability and reliability, this research evaluated the potential of integrating Building Information Modelling (BIM) and SA in the context of Life Cycle Management of road pavements.