Skip to main content

A seminar on how effective strategies for road maintenance will boost working life

One of the major components of public infrastructure is the transportation group. This group mainly includes the road network, airports, railroads, and ports.
February 27, 2012 Read time: 2 mins

Carlos M. Chang-Albitres talks about affordable, safer, and environmentally friendly pavement preservation practices

One of the major components of public infrastructure is the transportation group. This group mainly includes the road network, airports, railroads, and ports. The road network is perhaps the most important component of this group for providing ground links between businesses, industries, and consumers. Because of these links, there is a strong relationship between funds allocated in road infrastructure and economic growth.

The maintenance and rehabilitation of road infrastructure demands a great investment of time and money. The deterioration of pavement condition over time due to environmental factors and increasing traffic loads combined with the limitation of funds available for maintenance and rehabilitation creates a complex challenge.

A multidisciplinary coordinated effort is needed for addressing this challenge. This involves the use of new materials and innovative pavement preservation techniques. This involves the use of new materials and innovative pavement preservation techniques.

Without any doubt, the availability of new materials, new pavement preservation techniques, and alternative funding strategies for a better return on investments will be reflected on network condition and future funding needs.

A long-term vision to foster a sustainable and affordable programme to preserve road infrastructure starts with setting goals and delimiting expectations for building long-term lasting pavements. This involves a comprehensive understanding of the complex factors that influence pavement performance. Pavement performance includes consideration of functional performance, structural performance, and safety. In addition to this, the concept of green roads for better living should be encouraged by governmental policies to ensure high quality of life for all while protecting our natural system. Warm asphalt mixes, rubberised asphalt pavements, new environmentally friendly bitumen products for slurry seals, microsurfaces, and cape seals are just some examples of the evolution of new materials and technologies for pavement preservation.

As advocates of a proactive vision for affordable, safer, and environmentally friendly pavements, the International Road Federation (2462 IRF) is supporting an international task force to coordinate efforts and foster collaboration among experts.
The first meeting of this nature will be held in Orlando, Florida from 4-7 August, 2009.


Preserving our Highway Infrastructure Assets

Affordable, Safer, and Environmentally Friendly Pavement Preservation Practices

August 4-7, 2009 Orlando, Florida

IRF's newly developed international seminar explores the latest best practices in pavement preservation. The seminar's approach is truly global, due to its cast of international speakers, featuring experts from:

• The 2332 World Bank Group

• U.S. FHWA

• Nippo Corporation (Japan)

763 Shell Sulphur Solutions (USA)

2993 CECA ARKEMA (France)

778 Troxler Electronic Laboratories (USA)

• And Many More


























For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Roads to Recovery after the pandemic
    January 11, 2021
    IRF president Bill Halkias shares the Federation’s view on post-Covid
  • Implementing road safety initiatives
    July 13, 2012
    Blair Turner examines infrastructure options for achieving Safe System outcomes and their implementation in Australia Like a number of other developed countries around the world, Australia has recently adopted a 'Safe System' approach to addressing road safety. This approach, which stems from Sweden's Vision Zero and Sustainable Safety in the Netherlands, recognises that humans as road users are fallible and will make mistakes. There are also limits to the kinetic energy exchange that humans can tolerate (
  • Parsons Brinckerhoff launches highways management seminars
    October 22, 2014
    The first of Parsons Brinckerhoff’s regional seminars on how the UK should deliver whole-life asset management of its highways will held in Newcastle today, 23 October. The seminars, called Cracking up or Cracking on, are being run in association with the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT), whose president, . David Gibby, will introduce the event. The cost of maintaining the country’s roads is constantly under pressure from growing demand on the system and increasingly common extr
  • Game-changing ideas that deliver daily life and continue to evolve
    December 14, 2016
    As World Highways celebrates its 25-year anniversary this month, we thought that it would be a good moment to take a step back and look at the exciting times we live and work in, and pick out a few of the game-changing new products, technologies and services that have brought about so much innovation in our industry over the past quarter of a century. Where will these new ways of thinking and working take us next? The global highways market has been transformed in the lifetime of World Highways by high-v