2024 - China - Adaptive maintenance strategies to mitigate climate change impacts on asphalt pavements

This study aims to explore the potential of optimization-based maintenance strategies in adapting asphalt pavements to future climate change. Based on a highway network in Jiangsu, China, the impacts of climate change, characterized by global warming and intensified precipitation, on pavement life cycle cost (LCC) and performance were quantitively assessed, and the benefits of maintenance optimization in mitigating climate change impacts were examined. The findings indicate that climate change may increase pavement rutting depth and reduce pavement roughness and skid resistance, while its effect on transverse cracking varies over time. Adjusting the maintenance schedules, but still following the threshold-based approach, would increase the LCC by about 15.5 %∼19.1 %. The optimization-based maintenance decision-making model significantly mitigates climate change impacts, ultimately even saving 0.6 % of LCCs compared to the baseline. The outcomes will provide a quantitative understanding of the climate change impacts on asphalt pavements, as well as adaptive maintenance strategies to improve pavement resilience.