Qiao, Yaning and Dawson, Andrew and Parry, Tony and Flintsch, Gerardo W. (2015) Evaluating the effects of climate change on road maintenance intervention

1 Climate change has the potential to impact long-term road pavement performance. Consequently, to 2 maintain pavements within the same ranges of serviceability as before, current pavement maintenance 3 strategies need to be re-assessed and, if necessary, changed. Changes in maintenance may lead to 4 different agency costs and user costs as a consequence. This paper commences by defining an 5 assessment procedure, showing how maintenance intervention strategies and Life-Cycle Costs (LCC) 6 may be affected by future climate. A typical Virginia flexible pavement structure and anticipated 7 climate change was used as an example. This example is believed to be representative for a great 8 number of localities in the United States. A method using historical climatic data and climate change 9 projections to predict pavement performance using Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide 10 (MEPDG) under current or future climate was introduced. Based on pavement performance prediction, 11 maintenance interventions were planned and optimized. The maintenance effects of three treatments 12 (thin overlay, thin overlay with an intermediate layer, and mill & fill) were considered. A Life-Cycle 13 Cost analysis is reported that used binary non-linear programming to minimize the costs (either 14 agency costs or total costs) by optimizing intervention strategies in terms of type and application time. 15 By these means, the differences in maintenance planning and LCC under current and future climate 16 can be derived. It was found, that for this simplified case study, pavement maintenance and LCC may 17 be affected by climate change Optimized maintenance may improve resilience to climate change in 18 terms of intervention strategy and LCC, compared to responsive maintenance. 19