摘要：Pavements comprise an essential and vast infrastructure system supporting our
transportation network, yet their impact on the environment is largely unquantified.
Previous life-cycle assessments have only included a limited number of the applicable
life-cycle components in their analysis. This research expands the current view to include
eight different components: materials extraction and production, transportation, onsite
equipment, traffic delay, carbonation, lighting, albedo, and rolling resistance. Using global
warming potential as the environmental indicator, ranges of potential impact for each
component are calculated and compared based on the information uncovered in the existing
research. The relative impacts between components are found to be orders of magnitude
different in some cases. Context-related factors, such as traffic level and location, are also
important elements affecting the impacts of a given component. A strategic method for
lowering the global warming potential of a pavement is developed based on the concept
that environmental performance is improved most effectively by focusing on components
with high impact potentials. This system takes advantage of the fact that small changes in
high-impact components will have more effect than large changes in low-impact
components.
