Semester of Graduation

Summer 2019

Degree

Master of Construction Management (MCM)

Department

Construction Management

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

The need to continually maintain an aged and crumbling national roadway network, together with a growing demand for upgrading has resulted in major environmental and economic impacts around the nation. This has led to an interest in developing a structured framework to quantify the sustainability performance of pavements by balancing economic and environmental performance against engineering criteria. This study developed an Environment Product Declaration (EPD) based, decision-making framework to quantify the sustainability of pavement design alternatives. In this study, the sustainability of pavement is described in tandem with Environmental and Economic performance criteria. First, the Environmental analysis was inclusive of EPD and transportation module, where the first module quantifies environmental performances from raw material extraction to the manufacturing of pavement concrete mixes, and later measures the environmental burden associated with the transportation of concrete mixes from plant to the job site. Then, the economic module measures the cost value of a pavement alternative. Lastly, the computed economic and environmental performances were combined to define the overall performance, which in turn represents the cost-effective and environmentally preferable alternative. The developed framework was integrated into the current pavement design method, which in turn presents a decision-support system. To assist both designers and decision makers, the decision-support system can either benchmark or compare the sustainability of multiple pavement design/mixes, thereby assisting the decision makers to select the most sustainable alternative.

Committee Chair

Hassan Marwa

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.4953

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