A quantitative methodology for measuring the social sustainability of pavement deterioration

Egemen Okte; Jessica Boakye; Mark Behrend

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-52655-7

A quantitative methodology for measuring the social sustainability of pavement deterioration

Sci Rep. 2024 Jan 24;14(1):2112. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-52655-7.

Authors

Egemen Okte¹, Jessica Boakye², Mark Behrend³

Affiliations

¹ Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 130 Natural Resources Rd, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA. eokte@umass.edu.
² Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 130 Natural Resources Rd, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
³ Mechanical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, 1 Lomb Memorial Dr, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA.

Abstract

The social pillar of pavement sustainability is understudied compared to economic and environmental pillars, making it difficult to integrate into life-cycle methodologies. While methods such as social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) exist, they usually focus on social governance rather than quantifying the impact of pavement investment decisions on communities. This study introduces a methodology to quantify the impact of road condition on vulnerable communities, specifically Environmental Justice (EJ) communities. The methodology calculates the impact of road condition on residents and analyzes fuel consumption (as an example impact) for road users during recurrent home-work trips as a function of pavement condition for EJ and non-EJ communities. It was found that EJ communities in Massachusetts are twice as likely to live near poor condition roads and consume twice as much excessive fuel during recurrent home-work trips. The proposed method is designed to integrate into existing life-cycle methods and represents a significant step towards integrating equity into pavement management decisions.