Over 90% of road traffic injuries occur in Low- and Middle-Income Countries – this translates into over 100 million injuries and deaths that are forecasted on a global scale between 2020 and 2030, absent political commitment, leadership and greater action at all levels during the 2nd UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. Stimulating the development and introduction of safety technologies that are appropriate for developing nations is an industry-wide challenge that has been given insufficient attention at the policy-making level. Using case studies of successful and less-successful efforts to introduce life-saving technologies where they can make the greatest impact, this workshop will endeavour to prepare recommendations related to awareness-raising, financing, deployment, and lifecycle management strategies.
The objectives of the workshop are to provide a detailed overview of what is new in the bitumen world for highway applications, how we can work together to expedite the transfer of knowledge and implementbest practices in the region. The Middle East continue to be a rapidly growing market for highway construction and bitumen needs. This workshop is delivered in partnership with the Middle East Society of Asphalt Technologies.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
The 18th IRF World Meeting aspires to be a global summit & technology showcase that is both uniquely relevant to a wide cross-section of road mobility stakeholders, and focused on delivering solutions to the world’s pressing mobility questions.
Our mobility landscape has shifted beyond recognition in the last decade, marked by the uptake of ride hailing, micromobility, shared mobility services and connected vehicles. In this plenary panel, thought leaders will discuss the implications for a forward-looking approach to the delivery of roads and traffic management services for the next decade.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
ITS has traditionally offered municipal agencies the promise of increased asset performance at compelling benefit/cost ratio, especially when compared with the investments required to expand network capacity. However, there is frequently less emphasis placed on positive operational outcomes and customer experience, as a result of which anticipated benefits are not always achieved. This session will approach the question of ITS investments from an end user perspective using a rich blend of international case studies.
The end of the first United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 marks the start of new forms of national and international collaboration to avert the continuing and growing epidemic of road traffic injuries, responsible for 1,350,000 fatalities per year. As we pursue this essential path, it is critically important that governments combine their efforts with those of other actors engaged in the road safety movement to achieve the shared target of reducing road deaths and serious injuries by half by 2030.
Advances in technology will affect not only the use of tomorrow's roads but how they are designed and built. Agencies able to leverage Building Information Modeling, construction automation, and decision-support tools on the job site will see their bottom line dramatically impacted. This panel will review some of the most promising trends, and their implications for the way agencies and contractors work together.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
When it comes to evaluating road injury risk, AI algorithms will probably never replace the keen human eye, but they can supplement human-led analysis and provide valuable support to the work of traffic engineers in the field, in many cases by putting to use road data which they already have access to. This panel will explore opportunities to combine emerging AI applications that assist road agencies datamine their asset and traffic information in order to produce effective “heat maps” of road risk.
Charging road users for access to transportation infrastructure is an age-old concept that is currently experiencing a renaissance thanks to pressing funding concerns (arising from fuel tax revenue loss) and the concurrent emergence of a wider range of technology options. The societal pressures we know today – increased population and economic activity around geographic hubs – will all worsen over the next decade, placing additional stress on transportation infrastructure and increasing commuting times, absent demand management policies. The need to charge according to a growing number of parameters (such as location, destination and number of occupants) will thus become even more appealing to policy-makers.
The impacts of climate change are likely to affect Low and Middle Incomes in Africa and Asia to a disproportionate extent. Road networks will have to be made resilient to shoulder the burden of the increasing number of extreme weather events and changing climate conditions (increased drought or increased precipitation respectively, depending on geographic location). What methodologies are available to assess the impacts of climate change on existing road networks and to identify particularly weak spots, and how do they compare? How can decision makers navigate the options for improving the climate resilience of transport systems? This panel will review approaches to assess the vulnerability of critical links in a road network as part of road network risk planning and proactive investment strategies.
The mobility landscape for urban agglomerations is being reshaped by disruptive trends impacting the mobility of individuals and goods, and challenging cities to establish a clear vision of what their mobility systems should look like in the future and coherent strategies for getting there. Thought leaders will discuss how to fully enable their urban mobility potential in a digital age.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
Predictive project management processes, also referred to as waterfall processes, have been used for decades to manage infrastructure projects. Agile project management, which was first introduced by the software industry and which is known for its adaptability, aims at delivering projects using an iterative and/or incremental approach, thus helping improve project delivery time and cost. This Master Class will explore how road infrastructure projects, which are traditionally reliant on predictive project management processes, can achieve benefits using Agile processes.
One of the key road safety concerns for Low Income Countries is related to motorcycle safety and non-motorized traffic. While pedestrians remain frequently neglected in road projects, motorcycle use has seen a huge increase in recent years, leading to many deaths and serious injuries. What are the key factors determining these appalling safety records? What role does road design play in preventing injuries to vulnerable road users?
Sustainable transport is key to fostering inclusive growth and expanding access to essential services around the world. A well designed and maintained road network is an essential component of this process. This session will address key challenges in defining and delivering on road strategies that are supportive of socio-economic development objectives.
Faced with a climate emergency where transport is one of the largest contributors, policies and programs that support the deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have a major role to play in the fight against global warming. Potential ITS and business measures comprise a wide range of tools such as electromobility, connected & automated vehicles, traffic management, public transport, city logistics and Mobility as a Service. How might these be optimized and deployed for maximum impact on CO2 emission reduction?
With the recent advances in data science and artificial intelligence in every industry, including transportation infrastructure and highway operations, it is important for roadway professionals to learn the fundamental components of data science to implement them in their day-to-day practice. Contrary to the general belief, in order to understand and implement these tool and techniques in roadway construction, operations and management, no prior coding or computer programming experience is needed.
The main goal of this Master Class is to introduce the fundamentals of practical data science relevant to transportation and roadway experts. Various aspects, such as the use of different data processing tools, data visualization, data mining and artificial intelligence will be discussed through online hands-on tutorials.
As the world continues to deal with the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRF has invited Ministers to address the long term outlook for transport planning, including measures designed to future-proof road investments.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
A genuine and sustained approach to build support and reduce opposition to high stakes public policy initiatives is key to the introduction of ambitious transport sector initiatives. This session will review successful instances where proactive communication has unlocked stakeholder support while enhancing the quality of the programs being introduced.
Multiple initiatives are taking off around the world to electrify and automate vehicle fleets. If fully implemented, this trend carried with it the promise of safer roads, lower Green House Gasses emissions, and more efficient mobility options. However, the growth in electric and autonomous mobility needs to be accompanied by commensurate efforts to adapt the road system, including its charging infrastructure. This panel will take stock of studies and pilots carried out to ready roads for this paradigm change.
Global commitments to reduce carbon emissions and simultaneously increase the resilience of critical infrastructure to extreme weather events have placed greater societal expectations on road builders to design and deliver sustainable pavements that are both affordable and scalable.
Technological responses – and the associated decision support tools – are available to deploy tested and proven solutions with demonstrable benefits in a relatively short time frame. These include high-quality pavement materials with life-extending additives and green pavement technologies such as recycled asphalt materials which combine to offer road agencies a powerful toolkit of energy & environmental performance enhancement mechanisms.
This session will present a comparative benchmark of the state of readiness of the most promising pavement technologies, and endeavour to achieve a high-level consensus on the political and financing framework required to operate the transition from prototypes today to large-scale deployment tomorrow.
In February 2020, Ministers from over 100 countries reaffirmed the objective to cut road fatalities by at least 50% from 2020 to 2030, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Up to 17 million deaths and 500 million injuries are at stake between now and 2030: what lessons have been learned from the first UN Decade of Action for Road Safety and where to the biggest opportunities lie?
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
Multiple initiatives are taking off around the world to electrify and automate vehicle fleets. If fully implemented, this trend carried with it the promise of safer roads, lower Green House Gasses emissions, and more efficient mobility options. However, the growth in electric and autonomous mobility needs to be accompanied by commensurate efforts to adapt the road system, including its charging infrastructure. This panel will take stock of studies and pilots carried out to ready roads for this paradigm change.
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) has emerged as one of the most promising ways to enable a shift away from personally-owned modes of transportation. By integrating various forms of transport into a single mobility service that is accessible on demand, MaaS offers a game-changing customer-centric service that can also contribute to improvements in the living conditions and accessibilities of cities and rural areas. This panel will guide participants through the main principles, concepts, elements, technologies and full range of benefits arising from the successful deployment of MaaS.
Many developing countries are depending on financing of road development through International Financial Institutions in the form of grants or loans. The financial arrangements are often accompanied with stringent conditions regarding structural adjustment and counter-financing by the beneficiary country, limiting the budgetary discretion to a substantial degree. Private finance participation in road development projects through long term Public Private Partnerships could be a way to decrease the dependency on IFI financing. This panel will explore the associated pre-requisites, including:
Enabling legal, financial and institutional frameworks, such as legal dispositions allowing for toll collection supported by robust traffic projections.
Affordable, predictable and reliable revenue generating mechanisms for the financiers in order to achieve an acceptable return on investment, such as through toll collection or annuity schemes.
The availability of capacity and expertise in the host country’s institutions to conceive, procure, negotiate and manage the often-complex contractual arrangements.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
Some of the most notorious traffic jams globally happen daily in some of Africa’s and Asia’s big cities such as Accra, Lagos, Manila and Mumbai. There are few African and Asian cities that have integrated systems and processes in place to manage their traffic and inform road users about congestion. New technologies offer opportunities for monitoring traffic and manage traffic flows. Crowd-based data collection, for example through the use of anonymized smart phone data, could be used for this purpose.This session will address how to design integrated traffic management strategies for fast-growing cities in emerging countries and what affordable and effective Intelligent Transport System (ITS) solutions are available in the market to support city authorities.
Traditional methods of driver education and road policing have changed over recent years. No longer are most police forces fortunate enough to have the capacity to deploy patrol cars on every major route or highway. To supplement and enhance the efforts of educators and policing units, new approaches supplemented by technological advances are being piloted all over the world.
Some countries excel at long term infrastructure asset management & financial planning, while others have fallen behind. Fast-motorizing economies have an excellent opportunity to begin planning for long term maintenance during the investment stage of their infrastructure. This panel will address commonly shared challenges, and discuss opportunities to build a framework for knowledge sharing and decision-making around best practices for infrastructure asset management.
Work zones present an increased risk for workers who build, repair, and maintain roads, bridges, and tunnels, as well as for a variety of road users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists, who are confronted with less than ideal safety conditions in these work zones. Global statistics on work zone-related injuries are not available, however the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) reported 25,485 of work zone crashes involving at least one injured party in 2015, of which 642 resulted in at least one fatality. These figures suggest that, taken at global level, hundreds of thousands of injuries, and thousands of fatalities occur every year in work zones.
Work zones thus represent a very serious safety concern for the road community, particularly across the developing world where an abundance of road rehabilitation projects have not been accompanied by commensurate efforts and investments to foster a culture of safe road construction.
The deployment of Road User Charging (RUC) in economies across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has picked up speed in recent years, driven by the twin needs to mitigate road congestion and identify sustainable infrastructure funding mechanisms.
The drivers behind this trend are not fundamentally different from those found in other heavily motorized cities and countries around the world, however the region is characterized by a distinct economic environment, minimal reliance on fuel taxes and limited availability of alternative modes of transport.
Cities in the GCC considering Road User Charging must therefore develop an original model that builds on experience gained in OECD economies and adjusts these to the region’s economic realities.
This industry seminar hosted by the IRF is designed to take stock of the current RUC environment in the region and co-create high level strategies to ensure RUC benefits are maximized.
The Technical and Scientific Committee of the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition has invited surface transportation experts across the world to submit papers for evaluation. Papers should reflect original practical cases studies and research or innovation in technical, institutional, economic, business and policy issues that are relevant, recent and significant.
Traditional methods of driver education and road policing have changed over recent years. No longer are most police forces fortunate enough to have the capacity to deploy patrol cars on every major route or highway. To supplement and enhance the efforts of educators and policing units, new approaches supplemented by technological advances are being piloted all over the world.
For more than 70 years, an essential part of IRF’s mission has been the organization and delivery of continuing education services that help build the skills of road professionals and contribute to the dissemination of knowledge and expertise worldwide. This panel of thought leaders will discuss lessons learned and explore the opportunities to leverage a new generation of elearning tools to promote the talent and the public image of the road sector workforce.
The study of roads will be our vehicle through which to explore the history of the world.
Through this Master Class we will look at the general lines of development in the history of road building and tie this in with the nature of the communities that constructed and used the roads built by the road industry before us. Our journey will be a mix of archeology, anthropology, and technology, sprinkled with a bit of trivia and humour as we discover we have more in common with our predecessors than our modern practices and technologies may currently reveal.
Road professionals, engineers, and builders, as well as academia, students of history, and the curious (and indeed layman!) will find this Master Class to be a relaxing survey that will supplement and broaden the road specialist’s knowledge on the mobility of humankind.
Transitioning to zero-carbon transport globally is essential to keep climate change in check. Yet five years after the Paris Climate Agreement, transport emissions are still rising. Ahead of COP26, and building on the core themes of the 18th IRF World Meeting, this panel will present key contributions made by the road sector.
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