To achieve climate neutrality, synergies between circular economy (CE) and carbon reduction need to be established in the context of transport infrastructure. Implementation of the circular economy and resource efficiency (RE) policies have the potential to facilitate decarbonization targets, while using fewer natural resources, maintaining or enhancing biodiversity and providing regenerative design for generations to come. This paper presents the interpretation of RE and CE within transport infrastructure in the context of the CERCOM and LIAISON projects. As part of CERCOM, a strategic review of current practice was carried out to develop a definition of CE within transport infrastructure, and provide the successes and barriers for further transition from a linear to a circular economy. A Risk Based Assessment Framework (RBAF) and associated software tool were developed to provide a means to evaluate the impacts of certain measures and prioritize areas that require further research or investigation. LIAISON will provide further progression in this regard, and develop a methodology, support tools and close to market technological solutions to transform EU Transport Infrastructure into a more sustainable and low carbon economic activity.

Implementation of the circular economy and resource efficiency has the potential to significantly tackle the root causes of global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution whilst at the same time providing regenerative design for generations to come. The CEDR funded CERCOM project facilitates a move towards circular public procurement of national road infrastructure. A flexible and stable approach using ranked interpolation is used to generate KPI values for various criterion, where the user can specify the desired level of complexity based on scheme requirements and data available. The framework considers technical, economic, environmental and social criteria, as well as circularity, while assessing the change in risks in moving from a linear to a circular economy. National Road Authorities (NRAs) are at different maturity levels in relation to circularity. The developed framework caters for this, allowing flexibility for NRAs to tailor their application of the framework to suit their maturity level and the scheme under consideration. The outcome is a user-friendly intuitive tool with a step-by-step approach to enable informed decision making around adoption of the principles of circular economy in the maintenance of highway infrastructure.