Climate Change Impacts on Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement Structures across Canada

Canadian pavement infrastructures, now more than ever, face risks associated with the potential impacts of climate and extreme weather events. Canada has experienced and continues to experience a number of changes to environmental variables affecting the performance of pavements, including temperature, precipitation, sea level rise, flooding, and extreme weather events. Therefore, road agencies and public are increasingly concerned with climate resiliency of pavement infrastructures which were not intended to accommodate intense environmental conditions due to climate change. While much has been written about the general behavior of flexible pavements in response to climate change, yet there has been relatively scant investigation of the rigid pavement climate resiliency and sustainability. This paper primarily focuses on the vulnerability and long-term performance of Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement (JPCP) Structures from Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) perspective. In this paper, climatic data obtained from the latest Canadian Regional Climate Model (CanRCM4) were used. Simulation results from incorporating the projected climate data into AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design software showed that the magnitude of impacts and the degree of vulnerability arising from climate change was inconsistent between different performance indicators. Also, sensitivity analysis of the MEPDG distress models to multiple climatic factors revealed different trends of variation depending on climate variable.