IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/ito/pchaps/307659.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Pathway toward Sustainable Winter Road Maintenance (Case Study)

In: Life Cycle Assessment - Recent Advances and New Perspectives

Author

Listed:
  • Katja Malovrh Rebec
  • Janez Turk

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of winter road maintenance managed by an innovative road-weather information system and the impacts of vehicles passing the road during the snowstorm event. A case study refers to 10-hour lasting snowstorm event, considering a specific road section and application of a road-weather information management system to help winter road maintenance agency optimizing activities (salt gritting and/or plowing). Reliable information on the timing of the beginning of the snowstorm event affects (1) the activities of winter road maintenance, (2) the mobility of all vehicles passing the road, and (3) the fuel consumption of the vehicles. Since activities are optimized in case of preventive operation of winter road maintenance, less salt is needed overall. The road remains free of snow cover in case of preventive winter road maintenance operation, meaning that passenger cars and trucks pass the road at normal speed, without undesirable acceleration and braking caused by wheels slipping if snow accumulates on the road. Fuel consumption of vehicles passing salted and snow-free road remains unchanged, while fuel consumption increases in case of snow cover. Reduction of environmental burdens in case of such optimized winter road maintenance operation, is shown in this case study. The overall results of the comparative LCA analysis showed that the use of the road-weather information system in road traffic allows for as much as 25% reduction of environmental footprints. In the scenario where the winter service does not use information system the winter service also uses 40% more salt, which is also related with additional environmental impacts.

Suggested Citation

  • Katja Malovrh Rebec & Janez Turk, 2023. "Pathway toward Sustainable Winter Road Maintenance (Case Study)," Chapters, in: Tamas Banyai & Peter Veres (ed.), Life Cycle Assessment - Recent Advances and New Perspectives, IntechOpen.
    • Handle: RePEc:ito:pchaps:307659
    DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.110764
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/86674
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5772/intechopen.110764?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    LCA; environmental impacts; road; snow cover; preventive operation; traffic; fuel consumption; safety;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ito:pchaps:307659. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Slobodan Momcilovic (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.intechopen.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.