U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000


Skip to content U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway AdministrationU.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration

Pavements

 
 

Publication Details

Pavement Life Cycle Assessment Framework General Interest: provides practical guidance to engineers responsible for the day-to-day design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, and management of pavements.

Primary Topic: Sustainability

Description: Awareness of the importance of environmental protection, and the possible impacts associated with the production, use, and retirement of products, has generated considerable interest in the use of assessment methods to better understand and address those impacts. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the techniques developed for this purpose. LCA is a structured evaluation methodology that quantifies environmental impacts over the full life cycle of a product or system, including impacts that occur throughout the supply chain. LCA provides a comprehensive approach for evaluating the total environmental burden of a product by examining all the inputs and outputs over the life cycle, from raw material production to the end-of-life (EOL). For pavements, this cycle includes the material production, design, construction, use, maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R), and EOL stages.

LCA has a commonly accepted standard method (published by the International Organization for Standardization [ISO]), however, specifics within this method vary greatly from one application to another. Additionally, there are no widely accepted standards that focus on pavement-LCA. This pavement LCA framework document is an important first step in the implementation and adoption of LCA principles in the pavement community within the U.S. A framework for performing an LCA specific to pavement systems along with guidance on the overall approach, methodology, system boundaries, and current knowledge gaps are presented in this document.

FHWA Publication Number: FHWA-HIF-16-014

Publication Year: 2016

Document Links: PDF (file size: 16 mb)



View Pavement Publications

Updated: 04/11/2022
Federal Highway Administration | 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE | Washington, DC 20590 | 202-366-4000