Developing a Framework for Integrating Climate Change Impacts on Infrastructure LCA

Climate change, in the form of extreme and chronic changes in temperature, precipitation, wind, and sea level, will have a considerable and widespread impact on the operational and structural performance of infrastructure.

The current practices of infrastructure life cycle assessment (LCA) and the use of historical climate data would be unsuitable for long-term planning in the future.

Utilizing an LCA that integrates climate change is relatively new and requires an understanding of how chronic and extreme climatic events will impact infrastructure degradation, service life, and maintenance schedule.

Past studies that examined numerous pavement life cycle assessments (LCA) do not consider or integrate the impacts of climate change. Some studies, however, considered some impacts of climate change on road networks’ service life performance and associated life cycle cost.

The study’s goal is to develop a framework for integrating climate change impacts on infrastructure operation and structural performance into LCA (life cycle assessment).

A flexible pavement case study illustrated the framework for analysing LCA across several climate change scenarios.

Using an asphalt pavement case study, the framework assessed whether the current pavement design should be adapted to address climate change impacts.

The result shows that under the future climate data projections, assuming the RCP 8.5 scenario, the pavement performance profile will not change significantly during the first half of this century.

The international roughness index (IRI) and total rutting degradation were very close to the historical climate data. However, new adaptive design measures are needed towards the end of the century to optimise pavement performance.

The study’s findings might not apply to regions experiencing more rapid climate changes or higher traffic volumes. Incorporating mechanistic performance models with climate change data adds new uncertainties to infrastructure-based life cycle assessments (LCA).

For future research, the study recommends that the framework be applied and adapted to diverse infrastructure systems with the greatest sensitivity to climate change. These climate-sensitive infrastructure components should be modelled using mechanistic-empirical modelling routines.

Click on the link below to access the study: