Carbon Emission and Cost Analysis for Life Cycle of Asphalt Pavement Based on BIM-LCA-LCCA model

Abstract: This study aims to promote the green and low-carbon transformation as well as the high-quality development of transportation by integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) to conduct automated analysis of the life cycle carbon footprint and cost of design schemes. This provides a multi-criteria evaluation basis for pavement design and maintenance decision-making. Specifically, the study develops a BIM-LCA-LCCA integrated analysis framework, utilizing the visual programming tool Dynamo to extract critical data from the BIM model in real-time, such as road geometry parameters (e.g., mileage, pavement width) and structural layer characteristics (e.g., thickness, material types). The framework enables automated life cycle carbon footprint and cost calculations. A case study on S263 Provincial Highway in Jiangsu Province quantifies the environmental and economic impacts of different maintenance strategies on asphalt pavement. Among the four evaluated maintenance strategies, milling and repaving the middle and upper layers ranked highest in terms of carbon footprint, followed by ultra-thin overlays, milling and repaving the upper layer, with in-place hot recycling having the lowest footprint. In terms of life cycle cost, the milling and repaving of the middle and upper layers were the most expensive, followed by milling and repaving the upper layer, and ultra-thin overlays, with in-place hot recycling being the most cost-effective. Notably, the milling and repaving of the middle and upper layers required the fewest maintenance cycles (3 times within 30 years) to achieve optimal maintenance performance. However, in-place hot recycling demonstrated the best cost-effectiveness, achieving 99.28% of the maintenance effectiveness of milling and repaving the middle and upper layers at only 13.65% of the cost. The study concludes that in-place hot recycling is the most economical and environmentally friendly option, and should be prioritized under suitable conditions to optimize both economic and environmental benefits. This study, based on the BIM-LCA-LCCA approach, successfully automates the quantification of life cycle carbon footprint and cost, contributing to the efficient and intensive utilization of highway infrastructure resources.