The pursuit of sustainability in the field of road asphalt pavements calls for effective decision-making strategies, referring to both the technical and environmental sustainability of the solutions. This study aims to compare the life cycle impacts of several pavement solution alternatives involving, in the binder and base layers, some eco-designed, hot- and cold-produced asphalt mixtures made up of recycled aggregates in substitution for natural filler and commercial recycled polymer pellets for dry mixture modification. The first step focused on the technical and environmental compatibility assessment of the construction and demolition waste (CDW), jet grouting waste (JGW), fly ash (FA), and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). Then, three non-traditional mixtures were designed for the binder layer and three for the base layer and characterized in terms of the stiffness modulus. Asphalt pavement design allowed for the definition of the functional units of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which was applied to all of the pavement configurations under analysis in a “from cradle to grave” approach. The LCA results showed that the best performance was reached for the solutions involving a cold, in-place recycled mixture made up of RAP and JGW in the base layer, which lowered all the impact category indicators by 31% on average compared to those of the traditional pavement solution. Further considerations highlighted that the combination of a cold base layer with a hot asphalt mixture made up of CDW or FA in the binder layer also maximized the service life of the pavement solution, providing the best synergistic effect.

The latest advancements in road asphalt materials and construction technologies have increased the difficulty for engineers to select the appropriate pavement design solution with consideration of proper timing for maintenance planning. On the other hand, Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools allow practitioners to efficiently store and manage large amounts of data, supporting decision making in road asphalt pavement design and management. The present work focused on the elaboration of a BIM-based maintenance analysis tool for the specific evaluation of several condition indicators and the selection of proper maintenance solutions designed to include alternative materials and advanced recycling technologies. A traditional BIM workflow was integrated with additional user-defined property sets to investigate the need for maintenance at the present date and predict the degradation curve of the condition indicators through the least square interpolation of time series of data. The analysis tool also provided the selection of available pavement alternatives from a library of designed solutions based on their compliance with project-specific constraints (maximum budget, minimum useful life, and availability of secondary raw materials and in-place recycling technologies). The proposed BIM tool aims to be a practical and dynamic way to integrate maintenance planning considerations into road pavement design, encouraging the use of digital tools in the road industry and ultimately supporting a pavement maintenance decision-making process oriented towards a circular economy.

The transition from Building Information Modelling (BIM) to Heritage Building Information Modelling (H-BIM) is intended to pursue an adequate knowledge of the artefact that is to be preserved, progressively replacing the traditional methods of restoration and structural reinforcement projects with new tools for the management of both existing information and new interventions. The aim of the paper is to show the application of the H-BIM method to a stone pavement road located in the Archaeological Site of Pompeii. In detail, starting from a laser scanner-based survey, juxtaposed with coordinated points georeferenced through a total station, point clouds were handled by means of several BIM-based tools to perform the road design process, starting from the digital elevation model (DEM) and proceeding to the corridor representation. Subsequently, a visual programming application based on Python language was adopted to update the corridor information by means of the object property set. As preliminary results, a tool, complete with graphical and non-graphical information, is proposed to be used in conservation, maintenance and restoration projects.

Smart societies will make more intelligent use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which has the potential to transform the way to plan and manage infrastructures. New developments in computer hardware, as well as new applications and software, are changing the face of the infrastructure sector and society more generally, driving greater efficiency, increasing productivity, and greatly simplifying construction processes and life-of-asset maintenance. In European countries, the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) standards have been expedited. In this research article, the architectural-structural model in a BIM environment of the elevated walkway connecting the gate with the runway, a project named “IV Bridge” under construction for the expansion of the departure area of Naples Capodichino International Airport, is carried out. Software including Autodesk family, Revit for the architectural/structural model, Robot Structural Analysis (RSA) for the analytical verification and Naviswork (NW) for the 4D/5D model were used. The effectiveness and benefits obtained by implementing the BIM methodology are discussed, showing a reduction in terms of construction times and costs.

The latest developments in the field of road asphalt materials and pavement construction/maintenance technologies, as well as the spread of life-cycle-based sustainability assessment techniques, have posed issues in the continuous and efficient management of data and relative decision-making process for the selection of appropriate road pavement design and maintenance solutions; Infrastructure Building Information Modeling (IBIM) tools may help in facing such challenges due to their data management and analysis capabilities. The present work aims to develop a road pavement life cycle sustainability assessment framework and integrate such a framework into the IBIM of a road pavement project through visual scripting to automatically provide the informatization of an appropriate pavement information model and evaluate sustainability criteria already in the design stage through life cycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis methods. The application of the proposed BIM-based tool to a real case study allowed us (a) to draw considerations about the long-term environmental and economic sustainability of alternative road construction materials and (b) to draft a maintenance plan for a specific road section that represents the best compromise solution among the analyzed ones. The IBIM tool represents a practical and dynamic way to integrate environmental considerations into road pavement design, encouraging the use of digital tools in the road industry and ultimately supporting a pavement maintenance decision-making process oriented toward a circular economy.