Advancing Low-Carbon Road Infrastructure through Building Information Modeling -Integrated Life Cycle Assessment: A Comparative Study of Flexible and Rigid Pavements.
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The environmental CO2 footprint of road infrastructure, particularly its embodied carbon emissions, is a critical challenge in achieving sustainable development goals. This study focuses exclusively on quantifying and mitigating the environmental impacts of flexible and rigid pavement systems using an integrated Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework. Using Egypt’s New Administrative Capital as a case study, material quantities from parametric BIM models were analyzed in One Click LCA to calculate Global Warming Potential (GWP) across product, transport, construction, and end-of-life stages. Results show that flexible pavement has a 61.7% lower GWP (0.348 t CO2e) than rigid pavement (0.91 t CO2e), primarily due to the high embodied carbon of cement in concrete. The study demonstrates that substituting conventional asphalt with ECO-ASFALT Plus can reduce asphalt-related emissions by 44% and using GGBFS-modified high-strength concrete can cut concrete emissions by 48.5%. These findings highlight the value of BIM–LCA integration in identifying carbon hotspots, assessing sustainable material alternatives, and supporting evidence-based decision-making for low-carbon road infrastructure.
Institutions: Port Said University, Northumbria University
Language: English
Subfield: Civil and Structural Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7117468918
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