On CO₂ efficiency and trade-offs between sustainability, safety, economy and resilience in infrastructure developments

The escalating crisis of climate change underscores the pressing need to reduce global CO₂e emissions substantially. At the same time, a major increase is expected in global demand for infrastructure systems. In meeting this challenge, we here provide and illustrate a novel modeling framework that affords decision support in pursuit of sustainable developments of infrastructure systems. Based on this framework, for the case of roadway traffic infrastructure systems, it is shown that different strategies for the development of roadway traffic infrastructure systems, yielding approximately the same economic benefits to society, can differ in their embedded carbon footprint by up to a factor of three. This knowledge has the potential to contribute significantly to sustainable developments in general and mitigation of climate change in particular. Our models and results may readily assist decision-makers in the construction industry, at national and supra-national scales, in identifying optimal strategies for infrastructure developments. Furthermore, our work may straightforwardly support regulatory bodies and code writers in defining requirements for material and structural performances for the next generation of standards and codes.