Towards a Flood Resilient Pavement System in Canada - A Rigid Pavement Design Approach

As climate change continues to threaten pavement infrastructural performance across the World, the need for sustainable solutions for pavement adaptation cannot be overstated. In Canada, flooding is a prominent climate hazard common to most Canadian provinces and adaptation of pavements to this hazard is desired. Based on previous investigations, concrete pavements are recorded as sustainable, resilient to flood hazards, and proposed to be a good pre-flood strategy. However, design properties need to be given utmost consideration to provide required resilience. This paper takes a design approach to examine the resilience of Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement (JPCP) to flood by modelling the performance of matrices of typical PCC pavement designs in Canada under a Representative Concentration Pathway RCP of 4.5 W/m ² future precipitation scenario. The AASHTO Pavement ME Design program is used to simulate and predict performance changes under flood scenarios taking the Provinces of Ontario and Manitoba as case studies. In the Ontario study, mean flood damage peaked at 5.99% and 2.39% for collector and arterial JPCP pavement. In the Manitoba study, a total of 27 pavement classes was developed based on typical traffic, slab thickness and subgrade parameters common to the province. From the analysis of all pavement design classes, minimum and maximum damage observed was 0.31% and 3.03% respectively. The performance of the pavement designs classes in terms of flood resilience, service life and cost feasibility were analyzed with respect to traffic and subgrade conditions. Generally, results provided insight into the resilience and adaptive capacity of rigid pavements to climate flood hazards under Canadian climate condition.