Life cycle analysis for asphalt pavement in Canadian context: modelling and application

Pavement Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a comprehensive method to evaluate the environmental impacts of a pavement section. It employs a cradle-to-grave approach assessing critical stages of the pavement’s life. Previous LCA case studies used a wide variety of different functional units and factors in order to achieve different goals and scopes. These inconsistent functional units and factors create confusion in understanding the complete picture of environmental impact during the initial construction. Therefore, a set of models of pavement LCA considering every factor of the pavement life cycle phases is needed. Canada is a very large country and the different provinces have different pavement construction practices. Therefore, the goal of this work is to develop a set of useful models for quantifying CO2 emission from pavement construction in Canada. A total of 141 Canadian road sections from the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) database are considered to develop models using machine learning algorithms: multiple linear regression, polynomial regression, decision tree regression and support vector regression. These models determine the significant contributors and quantify the CO2 emission in material production, initial construction, maintenance and use phase. The study also reveals the contribution of Canadian provinces’ CO2 emission involved in the life of a pavement.