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Abstract The social pillar of pavement sustainability is understudied compared to economic and environmental pillars, making it difficult to integrate into life-cycle methodologies. While methods such as social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) exist, they usually focus on social governance rather than quantifying the impact of pavement investment decisions on communities. This study introduces a methodology to quantify the impact of road condition on vulnerable communities, specifically Environmental Justice (EJ) communities. The methodology calculates the impact of road condition on residents and analyzes fuel consumption (as an example impact) for road users during recurrent home-work trips as a function of pavement condition for EJ and non-EJ communities. It was found that EJ communities in Massachusetts are twice as likely to live near poor condition roads and consume twice as much excessive fuel during recurrent home-work trips. The proposed method is designed to integrate into existing life-cycle methods and represents a significant step towards integrating equity into pavement management decisions.
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Quantitative Measures of Social Sustainability for Pavements. Future Directions for Implementation.
Pavement sustainability requires balancing economic, environmental, and social factors. However, the social aspect is often less studied and harder to measure, making its integration into life cycle approaches complex. Recent policies like the Justice40 initiative and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have highlighted the necessity for fair infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of concrete social sustainability measures. Current methods like social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) tend to concentrate more on social governance and human well-being, rather than providing a tangible measure of how pavement investments affect individuals. This research summarizes a new method to measure the effects of road conditions on marginalized groups, particularly environmental justice (EJ) communities. It stresses the need to include social factors in assessing pavement sustainability. This approach evaluates the impact of road conditions on both EJ and non-EJ community members and road users. It examines fuel usage during commutes in relation to pavement quality in these areas. Finally, the study discusses future research directions for the methodology’s usage in life cycle frameworks such as LCA and LCCA.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2150204
- PAR ID:
- 10535962
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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