Life Cycle Assessment of Pavements through PaLATE

Sustainability concepts are becoming more and more popular over the years. In the transportation field, pavement´s construction plays a leading role regarding environmental issues and impacts; hence, different tools and methodologies are arising to handle them. The aim of this work is to critically analyze the possibility of employing one of these tools called PaLATE (Pavement Life-cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Effects) in Europe. This tool works within a “Life Cycle Assessment” (LCA) methodology, which takes into account the whole process of a pavement construction, making emphasis principally in sustainability and giving an estimation of environmental burdens (emissions and resources´ consumption) useful for decision-makers, companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations. To achieve the goal of this thesis two case studies were considered; the first one is the construction of the “Torre del Colle” viaduct located in the Piedmont region of Italy a few kilometers away from Turin in which the pavement is composed by two bituminous mixture layers. The second one, is that of an Italian extra-urban road also located in the Piedmont region and it is a traditional pavement composed by three bituminous mixture layers and one made of crushed granular material. Finally, with these cases, it was possible to highlight advantages, drawbacks and limitations of PaLATE.