Streamlined life cycle assessment: A method for considering environmental impact of road construction

The main advantage of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is in supporting decision-making with scientific data. Fully developed LCAs, however, are time-consuming and costly to prepare, limiting their viability during the procurement process. Streamlined LCAs, on the other hand, can be used more effectively as decision-making tools, due to the reduced level of data required. The inclusion of input-output data improves the completeness of streamlined LCAs, which are often severely abbreviated. This paper demonstrates the integration of input-output data with case traditional LCA data for a road system. It is shown that the use of input-output analysis greatly increases the completeness of the analysis, while the inclusion of traditional LCA data greatly improves reliability. Results for a road system are compared to typical buildings.