CERCOM - Development of an analytic software tool for the evaluation of innovative infrastructure maintenance methods in the move towards circularity

Abstract

Implementation of the circular economy (CE) has the potential to play a significant role in limiting global climate change whilst providing regenerative design for generations to come. To achieve climate neutrality, synergies between CE and carbon reduction need to be established in the context of highway infrastructure. As highway construction and maintenance accounts for an extensive use of resources, road authorities must become more material and energy efficient, moving beyond recycling, to reuse, repair and minimizing use of materials.

The CEDR funded CERCOM project developed an innovative framework to facilitate the adoption of Circular Economy (CE) and Resource Efficiency (RE) principles in the procurement of highway infrastructure. A Software Tool developed around a Risk-Based Analysis Framework (RBAF) is presented, which utilizes a weighted sum incorporating risk, cost and a number of developed environmental and social KPIs to rank various construction strategies. The intuitive, user-friendly Software tool provides a means to assess the potential benefits of alternative solutions in the drive to increase circularity and reduce carbon emissions within the transport infrastructure sector, providing a means to quantify trade-offs between safety, cost, environmental and social factors to optimise potential scheme options, by consolidating all categories into a single weighted metric. A flexible and stable approach using ranked interpolation is used to generate KPI values for each criterion, where the user can specify the desired level of complexity based on scheme requirements and data available.

The developed Software Tool is flexible and adaptable, whereby the complexity can be tailored to suit the scope of the scheme and the quantity/quality of data available. It provides a means to assess various innovative methods and materials with the goal of reducing material consumption and associated CO2 emissions in highway construction, while also quantifying the potential risk associated with performance and functionality of more pioneering approaches. In addition, use of this approach provides a means to evaluate the impacts of certain measures and prioritise areas that require further research or investigation.