A Global Approach on Pavement Sustainability

Presented By: Julie Buffenbarger, Beton Consulting Engineers
Transportation infrastructure management has traditionally focused on the safety and reliability without deliberately incorporating sustainability considerations. Recently, national, state and municipal governing bodies, the engineering community and society as a whole, are realizing the enormous investment of materials, energy, capital, and social costs affiliated with infrastructures system design, construction and maintenance. Approaches to help achieve higher infrastructure sustainability and resiliency include design and construction techniques to provide longer-lasting pavements, use of recycled materials in construction, and increasing the use of supplemental cementitious materials (SCMs) and portland limestone cements in concrete mixture designs. Concrete materials manufactured with blended cements intrinsically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing portland cement usage. In addition, blended cement concretes containing SCMs may substantially increase the pavement service life providing the most cost-effective method to reducing the economic, environmental, and societal impacts (triple bottom line) of surface transportation.