Urban Material Stocks and Circular Infrastructure maps the materials embedded in long-lived infrastructure and evaluates how these stocks can support future circular-economy strategies. The Belgian road network provides a major case study because its materials are spatially distributed, technically differentiated and repeatedly affected by maintenance and renewal.

The research integrates governmental and crowdsourced databases describing road typologies, pavement layers, construction materials, traffic, climate and soil conditions. High-resolution mapping reveals that material-stock efficiency does not vary linearly with population density and that the feasibility of urban mining depends on proximity, degradation and the timing of interventions. Scenario analysis indicates substantial greenhouse-gas reductions from improved planning and recycled-asphalt strategies, with reductions reported up to approximately 53 and 70 per cent under the assessed scenarios.

The work was associated with the European MAT_STOCKS research programme and translates stock accounting into operational infrastructure planning. It shows that circularity depends not only on how much material exists, but also on where it is located, in what condition and when it becomes accessible through maintenance cycles.