On 17th November 2016, the LCE4ROADS consortium presented the project's final results at its final conference in Brussels, Belgium. The conference gathered around 60 road infrastructure experts, including representatives from authorities and industry. It was opened by Steve Phillips, Secretary General of CEDR, who stressed the importance of adapting roads to future needs. The event was split in four thematic blocks:
- The importance of managing sustainability in the life cycle of transport infrastructures;
- Practical implementation of sustainability performance indicators in the process of designing, building and managing road transport assets;
- The experience of developing a CEN Workshop Agreement as a means for delivering project results;
- The need to join forces with other research initiatives related to sustainability aspects of roads (Twinning with USA).
The LCE4ROADS research was launched in October 2013 when the partners elaborated on the roadmap to create a new, green, holistic and EU-harmonised certification system to assess the sustainability of road construction. LCE4ROADS aimed at creating a certificate that integrates the four criteria under the Life Cycle Engineering Approach (LCE): social, economic, technical and environmental.
The 12 consortium partners represent a very broad range of stakeholders, i.e. large construction companies, SMEs, sectorial organisations, academia, standarisation bodies and research centres. The final outcome has been the elaboration of a new road certification system, a multi-criteria software tool and its respective guidelines. After a deep analysis of the state-of-art and receiving inputs from several stakeholders, the consortium has elaborated a list of 25 Key Performance Indicators to promote the use of greener, more cost-effective and safer technologies in the road construction for both asphalt and concrete pavements.
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| LCE4ROADS partners at the final Project General Assembly meeting on 16th November 2016. |
LCE4ROADS shows the strong commitment of the road infrastructure industry towards more sustainable goals set at European (i.e. White Paper on Transport) and global level (i.e. COP 21). All the presentations displayed during the final event can be downloaded here and the photos here. A final summary report of the project has also been published and can be downloaded here.
