Incorporating climate adaptation into future road infrastructure maintenance costsOA

The effects of climate change,such as increasing temperatures and changing precipitation patterns,significantly affect road infrastructure''s structural integrity and longevity,requiring a reevaluation of maintenance standards.Previous research on pavement performance did not incorporate climate adaptation into maintenance standards.This study develops a scenario-based road infrastructure maintenance cost prediction approach integrating climate and traffic scenarios.Using high-resolution data on pavement depth and materials,it evaluates future impacts on maintenance costs in Western Australia,and advances sustainable spatial planning under climate change through geospatial,decision-oriented analysis.The results show that without intervention,traffic and climate change could significantly increase road maintenance costs by 2050.Under an equivalent service-improvement target of a 1.0-point reduction in network-average International Roughness Index,adopting climate-adaptive pavement standards reduces life-cycle maintenance costs by 16.1%relative to the baseline scenario,while trafficmanagement-based redistribution reduces costs by 17.0%relative to the same baseline scenario.Integrating climate adaptation into road maintenance standards provides more accurate,actionable recommendations for policymakers and engineers to enhance infrastructure resilience,reduce long-term costs,and safeguard against the adverse climate change impacts on transportation networks.