Evaluation of sustainability assessment tools for road construction projects applied on an asphalt road rehabilitation project in Germany

The increasing awareness of the need for sustainable development in road construction and the growing number of different assessment tools worldwide has led to a general demand for a tool specific to the German market with its current environment and regulations. This thesis briefly reviews the overall development of the sustainability concept and then applies different tools for the evaluation of road constructions using the example of a small rehabilitation project in Germany. Further, a brief overview of the existing international and European standards and guidelines will be given, followed by a more detailed description of the Swiss method NISTRA, the application of the British asPECT, the Canadian Athena Pavement LCA and the French SEVE. Partly limited access to the tools and the small amount of available data due to the project size has led to rather limited results and it remains to be seen if a bigger project and a better access would result in a more sophisticated outcome. It can therefore be concluded that the sustainability evaluation tool for small rehabilitation projects specific to Germany would need a more simplified handling and structure then what is currently available.