Determination of the Social Contribution of Sustainable Asphalt Mixes

Abstract

The social contribution that infrastructure components contribute to a territory tends to be underestimated. Indeed, few studies referring to asphalt pavements take social impact into account in their evaluation. This study proposes and evaluates a method to estimate the social contribution of innovative asphalt mixes used in a test section in Chile. For this, a multi-criteria structure, the Delphi method, was used to validate the evaluation structure, and the Bayesian theory and a Noise-OR model to evaluate the social contribution of asphalt mixes. Thus, for the life cycle of extraction, production, and construction, a set of indicators and social criteria determine a cause-effect decision-making model. Six types of asphalt mixes were evaluated: hot mix asphalt (HMA), warm mix asphalt (WMA) with natural zeolite from Chile, WMA with exported chemical additive, and their variants with and without recycled asphalt pavement (RAP). The results demonstrate that the WMAs with RAP achieve a more significant social contribution, emphasizing its contribution to the landscape, development and innovation, socioeconomic development, and health.