Infravation: advancing infrastructure innovations through transnational collaboration

The Infravation programme (www.infravation.net) is a collaboration of 11 National Road Authorities. Unique for the Infravation programme is that National Road Authorities and the European Commission pool their co-financing contributions in one common fund with central negotiation, funding and monitoring. Also unique is the participation of the US and Israel next to The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, France, Spain and Italy.

Infravation aims at cost-effective advanced systems, materials and techniques in road infrastructure construction and maintenance. Its call for proposals generated more than 100 bids. Through a two-step submission and evaluation procedure and with a co-financing budget of €9.5 million, 9 research projects were selected for funding.

In this session 9 Infravation projects will present themselves, their innovations and approaches and expected outcomes. In a panel discussion, involving the audience, they will discuss the challenges and give the audience the possibility to reflect on the innovations and approaches. Further discussion will address ways to secure and optimise the exploitation and implementation of the results, in order to let National Road Authorities and contractors take maximal advantage of breakthroughs from the projects.

The projects have an important focus on demonstration and implementation of results and cover the following topics:
(also see Infravation Factsheet)

ALTERPAVE use of end-of-life materials, waste and alternative binders as useful raw materials for pavements construction and rehabilitation
(Daniel Castro Fresno, University of Cantrabia, Spain)

BIOREPAVATION innovation in bio-recycling of old asphalt pavements
(Emmanuel Chailleux, IFSTTAR, France)

ECLIPS enhancing concrete life in infrastructure through phase-change systems
(Narayanan Neithalath, Arizona State University, USA)

FASSTBRIDGE fast and effective – solution for steel bridges life- time extension
(Maria Zalbide, Technallia, Spain)

HEALROAD induction heating asphalt mixes to increase road durability and reduce maintenance costs and disruptions
(Daniel Castro Fresno, University of Cantrabia, Spain)

SEACON sustainable concrete using seawater, salt-contaminated aggregates, and non-corrosive reinforcement
(Antonio Nanni, University of Miami, USA)

SEEBRIDGE automated compilation of semantically rich BIM models of bridges
(presenter: Rafael Sacks, Technion, Israel)

SHAPE predicting strength changes in bridges from frequency data safety, hazard, and poly-harmonic evaluation
(Andrea Benedetti,    Italy)

SUREBRIDGE sustainable refurbishment of existing bridges
(Reza Haghani, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)

The current Infravation programme concerns a pilot, to develop the mechanism and procedures for future such initiatives with even bigger volumes.