Hessam AzariJafari, Ph.D., P.E.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Potential Contribution of the US Pavement Network to the Nationwide Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Several solutions have been proposed to mitigate the climate change impact on the nation but achieving the national pledge remains a challenge. In addition, lifecycle GHG emissions and the potential savings from the pavement sector have not been considered as a strategy to reduce the country-level GHG emissions. In fact, pavement networks can affect the performance of vehicles and contribute to lowering the radiative forcing effect during its use-phase while there is an opportunity to reduce the embodied impacts of pavement materials. These solutions include alternative binders and carbon capture sequestration and utilization as well as increased stiffness, reflectivity and budget-level for maintenance and reconstruction of the roads. In this study, meaningful solutions are proposed to mitigate the GHG emissions of pavement network in the embodied and use phases. To do so, a pavement management system model and life-cycle assessment framework were developed and incorporated to estimate the potential climate change impact of pavements and to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. On a national scale, the network-level analysis of the U.S. pavement roads shows that more than 70% of the emissions are attributed to the use phase (specifically, pavement-vehicle interactions and radiative forcing). The simultaneous implementation of the proposed solutions for reducing the embodied and use-phase of pavements can potentially reduce more than 65% of the life cycle GHG emissions on the national scale. The investigation of these solutions under the assumptions of extreme future scenarios, considering the changing climate, can provide new insight into the resiliency and sustainability of the built environment.
Hessam AzariJafari, Ph.D., P.E., Bio
Hessam AzariJafari is a post-doctoral associate in Concrete Sustainability Hub and Materials Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a principal investigator and researcher, he has been leading different projects on the life cycle sustainability and nexus of pavement-building-vehicle. He is a voting and advisory member of several technical committees on sustainable construction and environmental assessment, such as ISO 14082 Radiative Forcing Management, ACI 130- Concrete Sustainability and EC3: Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator. Hessam has been serving as the chair of ACI eco-concrete competition to promote and educate life cycle sustainability to undergraduate students in civil engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada.