23 March 2018 | Vienna, Austria

The SafetyCube European Conference on Better Decision Making for Road Safety was held successfully with more than 150 participants on 22-23 March 2018, at Palais Auersperg in the city centre of Vienna, Austria.

The SafetyCube project started on March 1st, 2015 and ran for a period of three years. Its results were presented in the conference, with special focus on the SafetyCube Decision Support System (DSS), which is the primary objective of the project. The DSS is expected to enable policy-makers and stakeholders to select and implement the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities in Europe and worldwide.

The conference brought together experts, stakeholders and decision makers from across Europe to discuss the latest developments in road safety: European Commission, FERSI, ETSC, IRTAD, FIA, individual research institutes, consultants as well as national, regional and local road safety experts. There was simultaneous interpretation in English and German.

Sessions overview:

• Vision for Decision Support Systems and Tools: What are the stakeholder needs when faced with safety issues?
• Consequences of Crashes: How to document societal costs of crashes in an accessible way for stakeholders?
• Application of the Road Safety Decision Support System in everyday life: Testimonials & user feedback by international respondents
• Hands-on user testing of the DSS with support of SafetyCube “personal trainers”
• Challenges for road safety decision making: Important lessons learned from the development of the Road Safety DSS
• The Future of the European Road Safety Decision Support System: Panel discussion with high-ranking representatives of international institutions

27 February 2018| Milan, Italy

The ALTERPAVE Project demonstrated how road constructions can reduce the use of natural resources by introducing alternative materials such as RAP and by-products in asphalt mixes. The demonstration took place on a real road in Milan (Italy).

The consortium, co-funded by INFRAVATION and combining EU and USA expertise, initiated the project in 2015. The technical team composed of five partners has developed an integrated approach for the sustainable construction of roads focusing on circular economy and considering the whole life cycle of the infrastructure.

The final workshop gathered experts from industry, research centres, universities and governments who will also be the main beneficiaries of the final results of the project. Presentations focussed on the description of the project, including the initial research on the laboratory by University of Cantabria (Spain) and Western Research Institute (USA), technical validation by VTI (Sweden) and Impressa Bacchi (Italy) and the final sustainable and environmental analysis by ACCIONA (Spain).

ALTERPAVE, together with other research initiatives, shows a clear commitment from the road infrastructure sector to improve its environmental performance while maintaining highest level of quality of the pavement for the end user. In addition, the industry fully supports this vision which is helping to modernise and adapt the sector to new socio-economic and environmental patterns.