Criticality-vulnerability assessment of regional pavement infrastructure network to future heat stress

The climate change affects the infrastructure system in a warming world. This paper presents a criticality-vulnerability assessment of the pavement network in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region to future heat stress. The high-speed road (HSR) networks, including the motorway and trunk roads, are analyzed for this purpose with the CMIP6 climate model under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios. Here we demonstrate that the growing heat exposure of HSR increases its rutting vulnerability in 21st century, especially after mid-century. We observe a positive relationship between the pavement exposure to cumulative heat intensity and the pavement rutting, which is independent of future pavement life-cycle and SSP emission scenario. The motorway shows better rutting resistance than the trunk under the same heat exposure. Finally, a criticality-vulnerability matrix is established based on HSR travel efficiency. Our results illustrate the maintenance priority of HSR pavement system under warming climate especially for the local municipalities that have fewer resources.