Highway Maintenance: Using Digitalization to Evaluate Alternative Designs for more Sustainable Refurbishments

ORIS worked with Die Autobahn GmbH Des Bundes on a due diligence project for the maintenance project of a section of the A15. The 3.3 km section is located in Brandenburg, near Cottbus, Germany. The maintenance had already been done. As a pilot project, ORIS was used to retrospectively assess the key performance indicators and identify potential of alternative design options. 

Figure 1:  Assessment of base design using ORIS around three key parameters

Alternative designs

Two alternative designs were studied to identify the potential improvement in the sustainability of projects. Those alternatives were based on optimisation of materials using the same design.

Figure 2:  Alternative base designs

The first alternative incorporates 25 % of recycled materials, still applied with hot mix asphalt laying process. 

The second alternative is the use of warm mix asphalt laying process instead of hot mix one, still with the classical design, so without any recycled material. 

• CO₂ emissions

At construction stage, using 25% of recycled asphalt enables to reduce the CO₂ emissions by 13 % compared to the base scenario without recycled materials, while the pavement laying process from hot mix to warm mix enables a reduction of the CO₂ emissions of only 2% due to the use of chemical additives to maintain the workability of the warm mix asphalt.

• Construction Materials Usage

The alternative design using recycled asphalt enables to save 25% to 30% of bitumen and 25% of aggregate consumption compared to the initial design. 

Comparison in Project Dashboard

Comparison between the three designs was visualized on the ORIS platform to allow our customer to better understand the advantages of alternative designs vs. others.

Key parameters are compared in the project dashboard to propose an easy comparison of the design with red, orange or green scores, as shown in the figure below. The alternative design with 25% of recycled materials seems to be the most advantageous one in this case.

Figure 3: comparison of the three design options through colour codes

ORIS’ visualization board offers our customers the opportunity to assess in a simple way the different designs and make the decision on the one that best fits their expectations and priorities.

This case study also shows the importance of considering the use of recycled materials in highways maintenance projects. Circular economy and innovative materials can contribute to more sustainable road projects.