Materials role in pavement design and its impacts in LCA of road construction and use phase

Session
WE.3.E || Applied Digital Solutions – Connecting Green and Digital Transformations?

Authors
de Montaignac, Renaud; Vlasopoulos, Nikolaos; Negishi, Koji; Queck, Oliver

Abstract
700 000 km of new roads are built worldwide each year. Materials and pavement design choices impact up to 60% of the cost of a road project and up to 85% of its overall greenhouse gas emissions. Connecting real materials databases at a very early stage enables us to measure, predict and support informed decision making. Based on LafargeHolcim materials expertise, ORIS is a web-based multi user service that will enable more sustainable road building with optimized solutions for each local sourcing environment. Integrated in BIM workflow, ORIS brings instantly an assessment of different pavement design options. First alignment information is loaded into ORIS to geolocalise the project and material sourcing opportunities. Embedding design catalog, the user has the capacity to select several pavement structures from the design catalog in order to compare them. Beyond Pavement choice, user can select several maintenance scenarii to be compared and assess the impact on the use phase. ORIS combines planning, execution, maintenance and recycling for the first time on one platform. ORIS is able to calculate the carbon footprint of a road pavement design during its different life cycle stages, from the original construction – including material productions, transport and construction operation – to its use and maintenance phases. State of the art models are used to incorporate the impact of the road use due to specific pavement properties (albedo, carbonation or lighting) or from pavement-vehicle interactions. A case study is presented to demonstrate the potential of the tool to uncover the environmental impact of the different decisions made during the design of a project as well as the indirect effects that decisions made in one phase (e.g. construction or maintenance) can have on the subsequent use phase. ORIS is bringing a direct connection to the Material environment and is designed to host and leverage efficiently EPD of construction materials.