First goals achieved by partners in WP2
On 8 September, DURABROADS experts (KTI, University of Cantabria, ERF, Acciona, IB) met in Madrid to discuss the project’s progress with respect to the state of the art for road materials and design, construction and rehabilitation techniques.
Since October 2013, experts have been contacting industry partners and road authorities throughout Europe in collect and analyse current techniques and identify constraints. . During the meeting, discussions focussed on the development of two tasks to be completed by September 2014: quantification of the impact of climate change on freight corridors, and second, the definition of optimisation criteria on durability, safety, cost-effectiveness and socio-economic factors.
The Hungarian Research Institute KTI has been leading the work developed over the previous months. Information from 15 member states has been analysed and divided in four regions: Northern, Western, Central and Southern Europe. The four blocks will be fed with information regarding asphalt mixes, bitumen/aggregate types, effects reducing road material durability, sustainable procedures, rehabilitation techniques, design methods and, last but not least, challenges and gaps in road-related procedures.
One of the challenges in the elaboration of optimisation criteria is the development of a coherent methodology. To this end, partners are in contact with technical experts form industry, public bodies and research centres to identify how they assess the relative importance given to various requirements (i.e. technical, economic, environmental, social), criteria and indicators both for road materials and road techniques.