Incorporating climate adaptation into future road infrastructure maintenance costs

• We develop a scenario-based model to predict road maintenance costs while incorporating climate adaptation. • The framework supports geospatial planning under climate and traffic change. • Maintenance costs could exceed AUD 3.57 billion by 2050 without adaptation. • Climate-adaptive standards cut costs by 16.1% per 1-point international roughness index reduction. The effects of climate change, such as increasing temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, significantly affect road infrastructure’s structural integrity and longevity, requiring a reevaluation of maintenance standards. Previous research on pavement performance did not incorporate climate adaptation into maintenance standards. This study develops a scenario-based road infrastructure maintenance cost prediction approach integrating climate and traffic scenarios, using high-resolution pavement depth and material data to evaluate future impacts on maintenance costs in Western Australia, advancing sustainable spatial planning under climate change through geospatial, decision-oriented analysis. The results show that without intervention, traffic and climate change could significantly increase road maintenance costs by 2050. Under an equivalent service-improvement target of a 1.0-point reduction in network-average International Roughness Index, adopting climate-adaptive pavement standards reduces life-cycle maintenance costs by 16.1 % relative to the baseline scenario, while traffic-management-based redistribution reduces costs by 17.0 % relative to the same baseline scenario. Integrating climate adaptation into road maintenance standards provides more accurate, actionable recommendations for policymakers and engineers to enhance infrastructure resilience, reduce long-term costs, and safeguard against the adverse climate change impacts on transportation networks.