Enhancing Pavement Design Selection by Incorporating Normalization into Life Cycle Impact Assessments

To evaluate environmental impacts of pavement, life cycle assessment (LCA) approach has been proposed by the Federal Highway Administration. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a vital step within LCA that transforms various emissions into meaningful environmental and human impacts. The LCIA is a four step process: classification, characterization, normalization, and weighting. Due to subjectivity associated with normalization and weighting, International Organization for Standardization proposed to use only first two steps in LCIA. However, normalization helps decision maker(s) in interpreting the environmental impacts of pavements by comparing them to common reference that are understandable and recognizable and ignoring them can lead to biasness in decision making. Therefore, the focus of this study is to propose a normalization method that minimizes subjectivity associated with currently available methods. A normalization method that combines fuzzy preference relations and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was evaluated and the evaluation results are reported in this paper. Although evaluation results are promising, more research work is needed before it can be implemented.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784479926.074
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/isbn/9780784479926
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
• Corporate Authors:

  American Society of Civil Engineers

  1801 Alexander Bell Drive
  Reston, VA  United States  20191-4400
• Authors:
  • Inti, S
  • Sharma, M
  • Tandon, V
• Conference:
  • 2016 International Conference on Transportation and Development
  • Location: Houston Texas, United States
  • Date: 2016-6-26 to 2016-6-29
• Publication Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 813-824
• Monograph Title: International Conference on Transportation and Development 2016: Projects and Practices for Prosperity

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Analytic hierarchy process; Decision making; Environmental impacts; Evaluation and assessment; Life cycle analysis; Pavement design; Pavement performance; Pollutants
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Pavements;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01603130
• Record Type: Publication
• ISBN: 9780784479926
• Files: TRIS, ASCE
• Created Date: Jun 20 2016 3:04PM