Release History

Summer 2021 Release - Pavement LCA

v3.2.06 (August 2021)

This update focused on more database updates in preparation for use by future Impact Estimator for Buildings Web App and APIs and includes the following improvements:

  • Increased maximum length of User Defined Product Name to 100 from 50
  • Added record Modification Date information to the User Defined Product table to enable most recently modified records to be preferentially sorted.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes.

Spring 2021 Release - Pavement LCA

v3.2.05 (May 2021)

This update focused on more database updates in preparation for use by future Impact Estimator for Buildings Web App and APIs and includes the following improvements:

  • Fixed a bug with Site Preparation Baseline Reports calculation

Autumn 2020 Release - Pavement LCA

v3.2.04 (Oct 2020)

This update focused on updating the database to prepare it for use by future Impact Estimator for Buildings Web App and APIs and includes the following improvements:

  • Corrected material type mapping for HSS Fabrication Process
  • Repopulated the LCA Results tables
  • Fixed a bug with the Product Library where users were able to delete their user-defined products even if those materials were being used (e.g., Project Extra Materials, Roadway Design, Roadway Maintenance and Repair Activities)
  • Other miscellaneous bugs and minor enhancements

Summer 2019 Releases - Pavement LCA

v3.2.03 (Sept 2019)

This update focused on correcting Bill of Material mass calculation errors for some user defined custom products

v3.2.02 (July 2019)

This update focused on adding new materials that will be used in upcoming new Sample Projects and some house keeping items:

New Materials:

  • AB PCC
  • BC PCC
  • SK PCC
  • AB Milled Base HMA
  • AB Milled Surface HMA
  • AB Base HMA
  • AB Surface HMA
  • AB Residential HMA
  • AB Crushed Base
  • AB Crushed Sub Base
  • BC Milled Base HMA
  • BC Milled Surface HMA
  • BC Base HMA
  • BC Surface HMA
  • BC Crushed Base
  • BC Crushed Sub Base
  • SK Milled Base HMA
  • SK Milled Surface HMA
  • SK Base HMA
  • SK Surface HMA

House Keeping:

  • improved form validation messaging
  • improved error handling (e.g., error 404 - File Not Found)
  • improved access to the Knowledge, History, and Contact support pages to ensure they are available even when you are not logged in
v3.2.01 (June 2019)

This update focused on the new Site Preparation Module and also includes the following improvements:

  • A new Site Preparation tab has been added to the Roadways form. Site Preparation can now be modeled by adding Earth Moving, Excavation and/or Hauling Activities then specifying the dimensions of material that are "worked" and optionally specifying the distance that material is hauled either on site or to stockpile.
  • Year 0 Maintenance & Rehabilitation effects are now allocated to the Construction life cycle stage. This change enables users to include additional construction activities and have their effects allocated to Construction instead of Maintenance.
  • Updated Electricity: ecoInvent v3.4 electricity kWh Delivered LCI data has been adopted. For US regions, the ecoInvent electricity data is regionalized at the NERC region instead of the state level as was previously done. For Canadian regions, the ecoInvent electricity data is regionalized at the province/territory level.
  • Updated Fuel Emissions to Air: Updated the biogenic emissions due to hydro dams and pumped storage for Hydro electricity.
  • Fixed a bug whereby Roadway(s) would fail to load when all project-level Construction Equipment was skipped.
  • Other miscellaneous bugs and minor enhancements

Summer 2018 Releases - Pavement LCA

v3.1.09 (September 2018)

This update focused on the following improvements:

  • corrections to PVI calculations, especially calculated increase in fuel consumption due to IRI (roughness) where values were being overestimated
  • corrected LCCA report residual value calculation for projects with multiple roadways
  • now supporting longer and more secure passwords
v3.1.08 (August 2018)

This update focused on fixing bug #10: for roadways with disabled roundings but with non-zero fore slope values, the non-zero fore slope values are contributing to the calculated granular material quantities.

v3.1.07 (June 2018)

This update focused on adding support for the following US locations:

  • California
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Illinois
  • Minnesota
  • New York State
  • Oregon
  • Pennsylvania
  • Washington State
  • USA (US average)
v3.1.06 (June 2018)

This update focused on fixing a series of bugs that appear to have been introduced with v3.1.04 and due to issues with logged-in user ID persistence when being accessed asynchronously. Bugs include the following:

  • Product Library would not display database records if the default Application had not been updated in the profile for the logged in user.
  • Project Reports were underestimating results for Manufacturing, Construction and Maintenance life cycle stages.
  • Comparison Reports were underestimating results for Manufacturing, Construction and Maintenance life cycle stages.
  • Comparison Reports were displaying exception messages when tasked to concurrently calculate and compare results for 6 or more projects.

    An error message will still be displayed if the report calculation requires more than 230 seconds at which time the request will timeout and the error is logged as an internal server error (error code 500).

    Unfortunately, at this time, we do not have a workaround for this server constraint. Therefore, we recommend comparing 5 or less projects per request.

 

 

Spring 2018 Releases - Pavement LCA

v3.1.05 (May 2018)
  • fixed bug where after saving new Roadway with one or more user defined products, the Roadway could not be found when subsequently trying to load the Project Roadway.
  • fixed bug on Roadway form where user defined product information was not properly cascading to sibling elements (e.g., lanes with the same lift).
  • fixed Material Type drop down list behaviour such that only Material Type records that have any Material records linked to them are available.
  • fixed bug in Project and Library Cost Item form where costs could not be specified for user defined products.
  • fixed bug in Project Cost Items page where pressing the "Delete all Cost Items" would not result in any Cost Items being deleted when the project was saved.
  • fixed bug in Project Cost Items page where adding and/or editing a single Project Cost Item would not be displayed properly until the project was saved and reloaded.
  • fixed drop down list selected item bug related to the updated 3rd party background libraries.
  • fixed radio button group selected item behaviour bug related to the updated 3rd party background libraries.
v3.1.04 (May 2018)
  • fixed bugs 008 & 009: PVI time segment IRI values are not contributing to the calculated increase in fuel consumption due to PVI IRI.
  • updated a number of 3rd party background libraries that the app depends on.
v3.1.03 (April 2018)
  • fixed bug 006: Changing a Project Location causes errors when generating Project level Summary Measure and Absolute value reports as well as multi-project Comparison reports
v3.1.02 (March 2018)
  • fixed bug 005: An unhandled exception is thrown when trying to create a new Roadway assembly
v3.1.01 (March 2018)

This update focused on the new Life Cycle Cost Analysis module.

Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) Module: is an analytical framework frequently used by decision-makers to compare the total cost to construct, maintain, and operate alternative pavement design and maintenance strategies.

A deterministic economic assessment model is used to quantify agency costs associated with pavement production and their maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R), as well as user costs due excess fuel consumption from pavement-vehicle interaction (PVI).

Click here to launch the Life Cycle Cost Analysis Overview PDF file in a new tab

Material Updates: The only major material updates were for crushed and natural, coarse and fine aggregates and lightweight, natural and manufactured aggregates. When version 3.0.01 was released, the Manufacturing Transportation energy consumption and effects had been rolled up into the Manufacturing Material life cycle stage. For this release, they have been separated.

 

 

November 2017 Releases - Pavement LCA v3.0.03, v.3.0.02

v3.0.03

This update focused on patching the Project Manufacturing Transportation module.

Material Transportation Update: The Project Material Transportation form now explicitly prevents Rolled-Up materials from having user-specified transportation distance values.

For Rolled-Up materials, the Manufacturing Transportation effects are rolled-up into the Manufacturing Material effects in the LCI data and not calculated. Previously, it could be confusing if a non-zero material transporation value was entered but did not result in non-zero Manufacturing Transportation effects.


v3.0.02

This update focused on database updates.

Material Updates: Cradle-to-Gate LCI data gaps existed for some materials in Saskatchewan location and have been fixed.

 

 

October 2017 Release - Pavement LCA v3.0.01

A new version of Pavement LCA was released in October 2017. The big change is that the tool is now using a consolidated database with the Impact Estimator for Buildings. This affects operations in the background, but the user will not notice any difference due to this change. There are also some data changes and bug fixes:

TRACI Measures: Updated TRACI measure characterization factors for Global Warming Potential and Acidification Potential. Methane and N20 factors for GWP and Ammonia and Sulphur Oxides factors for Acidification Potential were aligned with the current values used in LCA software. The EPA has not updated those TRACI factors, our software had been using values updated to more recent IPCC values, but our SimaPro LCA software is using the previous values, so we’ve reverted them back to be in line with those values.

Even if material LCI data hasn’t changed, the GWP and Acidification results will change solely due to the changes in the characterization factors, and will depend on the material. For example, Portland Cement results are barely changed, decreasing 0.2% for both GPW and Acidification. Bitumen GWP results decrease by 3%, while Acidification results increase by 75%.

Material Updates: The only major material updates were for crushed and natural, coarse and fine aggregates. There is no industry wide LCA reports available, but these LCI data were updated to use the same Ecoinvent profiles that have been used in recent years for the NRMCA and CRMCA ready mix concrete industry wide LCAs. Aggregates have relatively low effects on a per unit basis compared to other materials, but compared to the previous profiles, GWP and Energy results have increased by approximately 90-100%, with similar increases in the other LCA measures.

New Materials: Roller Compacted Concrete has been added as a new material type and can be selected in roadway elements and rehabilitation activities. A typical mix has been added to the Product Library and can be used in projects or you can create your own mix, just like any other product.

Equipment Table: The biggest change to the equipment table is to correct an error in the fuel use of the Milling Machine, it is now 160 times less per tonne than before. This equipment is chosen by default in any milling activity, and as an example, all of the sample projects include milling operations and the results of the construction and maintenance & rehabilitation phases of each of those projects will decrease compared to previous results.

A bug was reported for Cold In-Place Asphalt Recycler was reported where the fuel use was being calculated incorrectly when changes were made to the production rate or load factor. It turns our that this error also affected Back Topper, Milling Machine, Compressors and Pavement Router, the bug has been corrected and the fuel use values have been updated.

There was also an error in any equipment that uses Secondary Fuel (Asphalt Remixer, Heating Machine and Black Topper). The secondary fuel use was being calculated in litres per hour instead of litres per whatever the appropriate unit is. These have been corrected.

Pavement Vehicle Interaction: The PVI module has been updated. The IRI model has not changed, but there was an error in how it was calculated in the tool and that bug has been corrected. The Deflection model has been updated and the tool is now using this new model.

Ready Mix Concrete Process: The energy profile for Ready Mix Concrete was updated to the profile developed in the Industry Wide NRMCA Ready Mix LCA of 2016.

So what do all these changes mean to your results?
If you run the same roadways in v3.0.01 and compare to your previous results, those results will almost certainly decrease. We compared the results of two of the sample projects, Ontario Municipal Major Arterial - 10,000 AADTT, both HMA and PCC from one version to the other. Overall, the embodied total results for the HMA road, the GWP decreased by 42% and Energy Use by 20%, and for the for the PCC road the GWP decreased by 33% and the energy use by 43%.

We tried to break this down a little using a PC concrete as an example. The changes in the aggregate background data, new TRACI factors and the ready mix process change account for about a 5% increase in GWP and Energy use and about 10% for Acidification potential. Of that, 4% of the increase is due to the new aggregate data and the remaining 1% is due to the new TRACI factors and ready mix process for GWP and energy use, and for Acidification it is similar except the TRACI factors were responsible for about 4% of the 10% increase.

Overall though, these increases were hidden by drastic decreases in the construction and maintenance results due to the change in the equipment fuel use. Two factors relating to the use of the Milling Machine account for the vast majority of this decrease. One, the milling machine fuel consumption data was corrected and decreased by a factor of 160 times. Two, the milling machine is used in the construction phase to mill rumble strips, a bug in the code was assuming that the entire roadway was being milled, not just the rumble strips. This resulted in about an 85% decrease in the construction phase results. In the maintenance phase there is a decrease 30% GWP and 10% energy use for the HMA road, and 50% GWP and 20% energy use for the PCC road. Of these, the vast majority of the change can be attributed to the incorrect fuel usage value for the milling machine.

 

 

May 2016 Release v2.2.01

The first version of the Pavement LCA web app inherited the version of the Pavement LCA desktop application that was available at that time. This is because both desktop and web app versions of the Pavement LCA tool had the same functionality, algorithms, background data, and LCA results.

The key differences between the desktop and web app versions include the following:

  • web app does not support US regions
  • web app has fewer Sample Projects
  • web app does not have on-line help pages

Click here to see the pavement lca desktop application revision history.

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