Back to search

PES2020-Prosj.etabl.støtte H2020

Facilitating National Road Authorities to consistently include life cycle impact and cost considerations in all infrastructure planning

Awarded: NOK 37,687

Life cycle impacts and resource efficiency of road construction, operation and maintenance are largely influenced by choices in the early planning of road infrastructure (e.g. related to road type and route location). Possibilities for improving life cycl e impacts and resource efficiency thus already exist before the design and construction stage. Eco-balanced "designing" of road infrastructure basically takes place through all stages or road infrastructure planning. So improving resource efficiency and l ife cycle impacts should be considered in all stages of road infrastructure planning process, covering: - Early planning when the decision for new or extended road infrastructure is taken - Route location stage when one road corridor is chosen from a few alternatives, and the need for bridges and tunnels becomes clear - The stage when decisions are taken about the exact design & construction of all road infrastructure elements (e.g. road pavement, bridges and tunnels) National road authorities (NRAs) ar e increasingly interested to include life cycle impact and resource efficiency considerations in their road infrastructure planning process. Only few European countries already formulated policy concepts, and have own calculations tools to their disposal (e.g. the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden). Most European countries, however, are yet in the very beginning of that. There is thus a need to provide these countries with policy concepts and (software-based) calculation principles for including resource eff iciency and life cycle impact considerations in the different planning stages. Calculating life cycle impacts and resource efficiency needs to be consistently calculated across planning stages, and also consistently with costs estimates already made by co untries in their planning process. The overall objective is to facilitate countries, i.e. NRAs, in systematically including resource efficiency and life cycle impact considerations in all planning stages.

Funding scheme:

PES2020-Prosj.etabl.støtte H2020