| 1. |
- Adl-Zarrabi, Bijan, 1959, et al.
(författare)
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Safe and Sustainable Coastal Highway Route E39
- 2016
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Ingår i: Transportation Research Procedia. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1465 .- 2352-1457. ; 14, s. 3350-3359
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The project “Coastal Highway Route E39” have a mandate to, investigate how infrastructure can exploit renewable energy to reduce environmental footprint. Three PhD projects were initiated on this subject at Chalmers University of Technology by Norwegian public road administration. Results in this paper conclude that (1) Life Cycle Assessment should have a geographical dimension with respect to assumptions and input data, (2) there are substantial potential to reduce the CO2 emissions from the E39, especially when considering an electrification, and (3) the harvested energy from hydronic pavement system can be enough for maintaining ice-free roads in Nordic countries.
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| 2. |
- Booto, G. K., et al.
(författare)
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Road Planning and Route Alignment Selection Criteria in the Norwegian Context
- 2019
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Ingår i: IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. - 1757-8981 .- 1757-899X. ; 471:6
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reveals the main factors that guide road alignment design process in Norway. The goal is to discover what constitutes the main priorities for road planners, how these priorities are ranked when it comes to alignment selection, and how they are related to guiding factors identified in official planning documents and government transport plans throughout the life cycle of a road. This is done through a comprehensive literature and data search, involving published academic research in the road alignment design field, and by exploring Norwegian road planning documents and guidelines. Examples from a recently implemented road project are also included as a way to illustrate alignment priorities in theory versus how alignment decisions are made in practice. Particular attention is paid to how key factors influence environmental and social dimensions and how much importance these dimensions are given in the overall decision-making process. The focus on the Norwegian case is relevant in that it will identify which knowledge gaps need to be filled based on actual practices in the Norwegian road sector. The results of this study found that the dominating factors in road planning and alignment selection are the user cost and the environmental and socio-economic as they are directly related to the main national transport strategy of developing a carbon-neutral and resilient transport system. These results can be used to reinforce and amplify existing road planning strategies and to understand where challenges for environmental and social responsible road planning and alignment selection are found.
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| 3. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Road Pavements: Comparing the Quality and Point of Application of Existing Software Tools on the basis of a Norwegian Case Study
- 2016
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Ingår i: CIB World Building Congress 2016. - 1797-8904. - 9789521537455 ; 5:Tampere, s. 749-760
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Various software tools have been developed to evaluate the life cycle performances of roads toprovide decision supports for road authorities and contractors. It is therefore important to comparethe strengths and limitations of these software tools to understand the appropriate application andto identify the points for optimization. This study evaluated EFFEKT 6.6, EKA, and LICCERsoftware tools, by applying the environmental life cycle assessment following the ISO 14040standard. The assessment was based on an open-air road (excluding tunnels and bridges) with afunctional unit of one kilometer and greenhouse gas emissions as well as embodied energyindicators were evaluated in the considered software tools. The open-air road was modeled foreach software tool with respects to road class H9 characteristic in Norway, classed as a nationalroad. The assessment showed that the system boundary and purpose of use differed between theconsidered software tools. This resulted in performing the assessment only over A1 – 4 and B6modules according to EN 15978 standard for the hypothetical open-air road to provide acomparable boundary condition. The results demonstrated that EFFEKT overall yielded highervalues for greenhouse gas emissions and embodied energy compared to the two other softwaretools, while, the three software tools quantified nearly the same amount of asphalt use within the20-year analysis period.
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| 4. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Estimation of Norwegian Asphalt Surfacing Lifetimes Using Survival Analysis Coupled with Road Spatial Data
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Transportation Engineering Part B: Pavements. - 2573-5438. ; 145:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Combinations of different factors and their relative importance have a mixed effect on the longevity of pavements, which are essential to be understood to enhance long-term maintenance planning. This study used spatial road data from Norway followed by integrating temporal-spatial and statistical analyses to show a potential approach to estimate the lifetimes of asphalt surfacing. For the statistical part, a stratified Cox proportional hazard model was used to understand the relationship between longevity of surface mixtures and different factors, while avoiding having predefined assumptions rooted in deterministic modeling. In addition, rutting was used as the response variable to determine distress-specific asphalt surfacing lifetimes and to handle censored data. Inclusion of rutting as the response variable showed that the median technical lifetime of asphalt surfacing is about 2 years shorter than that of the maintenance activity records. The results showed the significance of each covariate; however, aggregate nominal maximum size and heavy traffic volume were consistently the significant covariates across the studied traffic classes. In addition, the results were fitted to reference categories in each covariate to show a practical approach to interpret absolute values of lifetimes from a survival table.
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| 5. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Machine learning-based stocks and flows modeling of road infrastructure
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Industrial Ecology. - : Wiley. - 1530-9290 .- 1088-1980. ; 26:1, s. 44-57
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper introduces a new method to account for the stocks and flows of road infrastructure at the national level based on material flow accounting (MFA). The proposed method closes some of the current shortcomings in road infrastructures that were identified through MFA: (1) the insufficient implementation of prospective analysis, (2) heavy use of archetypes as a way to represent road infrastructure, (3) inadequate attention to the inclusion of dissipative flows, and (4) limited coverage of the uncertainties. The proposed dynamic bottom-up MFA method was tested on the Norwegian road network to estimate and predict the material stocks and flows between 1980 and 2050. Here, a supervised machine learning model was introduced to estimate the road infrastructure instead of archetypical mapping of different roads. The dissipation of materials from the road infrastructure based on tire-pavement interaction was incorporated. Moreover, this study utilizes iterative classified and regression trees, lifetime distributions, randomized material intensities, and sensitivity analyses to quantify the uncertainties.
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| 6. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987
(författare)
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Performance Measures of Road Infrastructure - A Life Cycle Thinking Approach
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Roads have been an important asset of human society and the approach we adopt towards planning, designing, constructing, operating, and maintaining of the road infrastructure has significant consequences in the long-term for not only the humans, but all species on planet Earth. Hence, the lifecycle performance of the road infrastructure that sustain our socioeconomic development with a low environmental impact, while fulfilling their technical and functional requirements is of critical importance and needs to be improved. This thesis aims to understand the nature of the information that helps improve the performance of road infrastructure over their lifecycle and propose solutions that close the existing research gaps. This thesis is essentially divided into two parts. In the first part, it focuses on the current lifecycle thinking towards the public physical infrastructure. It carries out a survey of the literature to gain a holistic understanding of the current challenges that infrastructure faces, namely population growth, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, land use and coverage change, and abiotic depletion. It then recommends potential approaches to close the identified gaps. The investigation reveals that considering the entire lifecycle of the infrastructure helps avoid partial thinking, which affects the mankind and the ecosystem adversely and results in problem shifting. It shows how the lifecycle-based methods that incorporate uncertainties help enhance the depth of understanding and decisions regarding the lifecycle performance of infrastructure. In addition, it advocates that the collaboration between and within different fields of science and practice needs to be increased to better capture the consequences of various risks and avoid adverse effects. In the second part, a systematic desk (or secondary) research and regular interactions with the Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA) were carried out which revealed the following research gaps to improve the environmental and economic performance of the Norwegian road networks: (1) measure environmental performance of the construction machinery over their entire lifecycle based on regionalized data, which helps increase both the resolution and exclusiveness of the results; (2) estimate lifetimes of pavements based on their technical performance, which helps in improving the validity of the results when benchmarking different pavements with respect to different criteria, e.g., environment, economy, and society, and supports the decision-making at different phases of road infrastructure projects; and (3) capture material flows and stocks of road infrastructure, which helps get an overview of the availability in terms of quantities and time of the secondary materials to theoretically substitute the virgin/primary materials. Hence, potential approaches were used by means of different methods and models, namely geographical information systems (GIS), life cycle assessment (LCA), survival analysis, decision tree model, and material flow accounting (MFA), for the three focus areas to bridge the identified gaps. Also, the Norwegian input data were applied to show the proposed approaches quantitatively. Findings from the research carried out in the second part of the thesis show that: · Although the operation phase of the construction machinery has been studied solely in most of the prior research, the investigation in this research showed that the inclusion of the other phases is equally important. This means that the production, delivery, maintenance, dismantling, waste processing, and circulation of energetic and non-energetic materials at different phases of a machine’s lifespan contribute to the overall environmental impacts. · The proposed approach to measure the durability of the pavements showed discrepancies between the maintenance records and the technical requirements and explained how different factors increased or decreased the lifetimes of pavements in different traffic classes. In addition, the results from the statistical tables (showing relative values) were transformed to absolute values to ease the readability and comparability of lifetimes between different pavements. · The amount of stock in the Norwegian road network has continuously increased and in 2017 there were about 420 Mt of road materials in-service. The growth was owing to the continuous expansion of the road networks. However, the growth in the amount of road stock was predicted to increase by 9 % – 10 % between 2018 and 2050 as well, though it was assumed that the network would not expand after 2017.
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| 7. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987
(författare)
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Performance Measures of Road Infrastructures
- 2017
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Roads are transport infrastructures that play a fundamental role in the development of societies and businesses. They are valuable assets, as they connect places, provide mobility, create jobs and stimulate economic prosperity. Although road infrastructures have shown various positive impacts throughout the decades, they require various resources for building, operation and maintenance. Moreover, due to their long, almost never-ending, lifetime, their environmental and economic impacts are important in support of achieving climate change mitigation and cost optimization goals. In order to achieve these goals, as for other transport infrastructure, a holistic approach is needed to understand the challenges connecting environmental, societal and economic impacts, for both existing and future roads, and develop consistent strategies toward the overall aim of sustainability.The present licentiate thesis evaluates the environmental and economic assessment of Norwegian roads, both new and existing, using two well-established methodologies: environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA). The main focus of the thesis is on open-road infrastructure, while road tunnels and bridges are excluded from investigation. A scientific literature review of LCA and LCCA was conducted using qualitative research analysis related to road infrastructure. The review identified and summarized key findings and highlighted strengths and weaknesses of papers in the domain of LCA and LCCA. In addition, three types of LCA software tools that are currently used/tested in Norwegian road projects were evaluated on a hypothetical open-road case and the results were further discussed with respect to their area of coverage and methodologies. Furthermore, the lifetime of different pavement mixes were estimated in three selected counties in Norway to identify the effect of different covariates in the lifetime expectancy of pavement. Here lifetime is defined as the period of time from laying a new pavement or building a complete new road until the in-service pavement/road fails according to road condition criterion.
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| 8. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Regionalized environmental impacts of construction machinery
- 2020
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Ingår i: International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1614-7502 .- 0948-3349. ; 25:8, s. 1472-1485
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: This study aims to establish a regionalized environmental impact assessment of construction machinery equipped with diesel engines certified by the European emission standard Stage V, and operated in cold climatic zones in Europe. Method: The study quantifies potential environmental impacts associated with construction machinery over the entire lifecycle, from extraction of materials to the end-of-life. For the operation phase, a meso-level emission accounting method is applied to quantify tailpipe emissions for certain subcategories of construction machinery. This is achieved by determining the operational efficiency of each machine in terms of effective hours. The quantified emission data are then adjusted based on engine deterioration models to estimate the rate of increase in emissions throughout the lifetime of each machine. Finally, the CML impact assessment method is applied to inventory data to quantify potential environmental impacts. Results: The study shows that tailpipe emissions, which largely depend on an engine’s fuel consumption, had the largest contribution to environmental impacts in most impact categories. At the same time, there was a positive correlation between the operation weight and the impacts of the machinery. Also, machinery with similar operation weight had relatively similar impact patterns due to similar driving factors and dependencies. In addition, network, sensitivity, and uncertainty analyses were performed to quantify the source of impacts and validate the robustness of the study. Results of the sensitivity analysis showed that the responsiveness of the studied systems is very sensitive to changes in the amount of fuel consumption. In addition, the uncertainty results showed that the domain of uncertainty increased as the operation weight subcategory of machinery increased. Conclusion: This study extends previous work on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of construction machinery, and the methodology developed provides a basis for future extension and improvement in this field. The use of effective hours as the unit of operational efficiency helps to resolve uncertainties linked to lifetime and annual operation hours. Also, the obtained results can be of use for decision support and for assessing the impacts of transition from fossil fuels to alternative fuel types.
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| 9. |
- Ebrahimi, Babak, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Tank-to-wheel emissions from articulated steered wheel loaders
- 2018
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Ingår i: Proceedings of 7th Transport Research Arena TRA 2018.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Performing a comprehensive emission accounting via monitoring equipment to survey the performance of machinery is often an intensive work and costly. This often requiring hours of measurements and a sufficient number of observations to obtain valid findings. The purpose of current work is to introduce a screening emission accounting as a way to have a quick overview of emissions associated with non-road mobile machinery by having a simplified assessment method. To meet this aim, this study uses documented data from performances of machinery and couples them with the recently published guidebook by the European Emission Agency. To map the results, operational performances of four wheel loaders operating in quarries to move stone materials are used, equipped with Stage IV engines and net power output in a range between 130 ≤ kW < 560. The obtained results showed that the positive correlation between an increase in fuel consumption and exhaust emissions is not changed. The mass of emissions, however, is better addressed if emissions are linked with the efficiency of equipment, instead of effective hour. Machinery that consumed less fuel per m3 moved volume of materials, resulted in having less emissions compared to those that had higher fuel consumption per m3 moved volume.
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| 10. |
- Gaylord Kabongo, Booto, et al.
(författare)
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The effect of highway geometry on fuel consumption of heavy-duty vehicles operating in eco-driving mode
- 2017
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Ingår i: CRC-Taylor & Francis Group. - Taylor & Francis Group 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300 : CRC Press. ; , s. 2179-2185
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents an analysis of the effects of the geometry of a highway on fuel consumption of heavy-duty vehicles operating in eco-driving mode. Field data from a high traffic volume highway in Norway are used in this study. Vertical and horizontal profile layers of the same road sections are considered individually and merged with vehicle field data. The study includes a correlation and regression analysis to investigate the relationship between the road gradient and the rate of fuel consumption of a representative truck. The effect of road gradient is examined in both acceleration and deceleration (retardation) mode. Different models are devel-oped, which can serve as a tool for decision making at early design and planning phases of a highway project, where information on fuel consumption and its environmental impacts may influence design choices.
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