A systematic assessment of road pavement sustainability through a review of rating tools

Abstract

tPavements are engineered systems present in every modern society, and they have significant envi-ronmental, economic and social impacts. In an effort to promote more sustainable decisions regardingpavement design, construction and management, several pavement sustainability assessment tools havebeen developed. This research reviewed some of these tools and found that many of them do not treatthe pavement as a system; instead, they seek to optimize individual aspects of the pavement in an effortto increase its sustainability. Therefore, a framework for analytically assessing the system outcomestowards sustainable objectives is presented and applied for modern pavement sustainability assessment.The results suggest that this framework provides a way to systematically include data in the evaluationof the outcomes of pavement management decisions towards achieving sustainable objectives.