The MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) is pioneering a shift in how infrastructure professionals assess pavement sustainability, aiming to make life-cycle assessments (LCAs) more accessible, efficient, and impactful writes Andrew Paul Laurent for MIT News in an interview with Postdoctoral researcher Haoran Li who is helping lead the effort, developing tools that enable stakeholders—from transportation agencies to city planners—to evaluate the environmental performance of pavements using minimal but meaningful data. This initiative is poised to advance sustainable design without overwhelming practitioners with complex modeling or excessive data demands.
Life-cycle assessment is a holistic method used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product or system throughout its entire lifespan—from material sourcing and construction to usage, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning. In pavements, the use phase dominates the environmental footprint, largely due to the influence of road conditions on vehicle fuel consumption. Reflective surfaces and CO₂ uptake by concrete also play a role in climate impacts. Given the vast expanse of paved infrastructure across the U.S., optimizing the sustainability of these surfaces presents a major opportunity for reducing emissions and improving long-term resilience.
Current LCA tools face challenges in managing uncertainty and balancing data requirements with practical application. The CSHub’s research addresses these issues by identifying the most influential variables in pavement performance and focusing data collection around them. This targeted method has been shown to reduce data requirements by up to 85% while still producing reliable insights. The approach not only makes assessments faster and easier but also ensures that pavement designs better reflect real-world conditions and long-term environmental consequences.
To further democratize access to these insights, the CSHub is incorporating its streamlined LCA method into an online software platform. This tool empowers planners and engineers to compare pavement options based on performance, longevity, and sustainability, even when working with limited data. By enabling smarter decision-making with fewer inputs, MIT’s work is paving the way—literally and figuratively—for a more sustainable future in infrastructure development.
Read more here: https://news.mit.edu/2025/3q-making-most-of-limited-data-to-boost-pavement-performance-0514