Pavement life cycle management: Towards a sustainability assessment framework in Europe

Abstract

Pavement Life Cycle Management is a 2-year international project aiming at supporting European National Road Authorities (NRAs) to introduce sustainability in their practices by providing training on Life Cycle techniques and a user-friendly package to support their widespread implementation. The first task in Pavement Life Cycle Management (PavementLCM) project is the creation of a Sustainability Assessment (SA) framework that complies with EN15643-5 and consequently include the three pillars of sustainability, use a life cycle approach and use quantifiable sustainability performance indicators. This paper presents the first steps towards the creation of the framework which includes the following steps: 1) review of the available Product Category Rules (PCRs) related to asphalt mixtures and pavement activities; 2) definition of the object of the assessment; 3) review and survey of NRAs practices of the main research efforts in Europe towards the definition of sustainability performance indicators.