Research Trends in Transport Infrastructure

In order to understand the actual research trends in the field of construction materials and in the field of transport infrastructure including civil engineering investigate the web site COST (Cooperation Scientifique et Technique) at the address www.cost.est.org . According to the menu of this web site you can explore the following domains: Materials, Physics and Nanosciences and Transport and Urban Development ,and going to the actions select for each domain at least 10 former or actual actions, writing down their titles and main objectives. For one of these actions make a detailed presentation. From the Materials, Physics and Nanosciences domain I have selected the following actions: 1. Changing behaviour towards a more sustainable transport system The main objective of the action is to analyse the conditions under which the process of growing unsustainable transport demand could be reversed, by changing travellers' shippers' and carriers' behaviours. 2. Real-time Monitoring, Surveillance and Control of Road Networks under Adverse Weather Conditions The main objective of the action is to understand better the impacts of weather on freeways/motorways as well as on urban networks highway operations and to develop, promote and implement strategies and tools to mitigate those impacts. 3. Buses with a high level of service The main objective of the action is to increase the public transport use, or in other words, to enhance sustainable mobility by developing new bus services within public transport networks to be able to fight or to compete with car use within Europe. 4. Accident Prevention Options with Motorcycle Helmets The main objective of this action is to increase knowledge on how motorcycle helmets could be improved to help facilitate the avoidance of accidents.

5. Strategies for a Low Carbon Built Environment The main objective of this action is to investigate, across the European Union, how carbon reductions can be achieved through appropriate design and management of the urban built environment. 6. Towards Autonomic Road Transport Support Systems The aim of this action is to unite and align groups across Europe from computer science, engineering and transport studies into a world leading research community that will develop new ways of designing Road Transportation Support (RTS) systems based on the ideas of autonomic systems. 7. Towards safer bicycling through optimization of bicycle helmets and usage Cycling is an excellent sustainable alternative to driving. Cyclists have few safety options, of which a helmet is one. However, there are strong indications that law-mediated increases of helmet usage for cyclists cause confounding factors which temper the positive effect of these helmets on head and brain injury. Furthermore, current helmet design is suboptimal. Since several fields are important to bicycle helmet optimization, a combined effort involving all of these is necessary; so that a given parameter is not optimized at the cost of another. 8. Greenstructures and urban planning The main objective of the action was to reach a better understanding of the role played by planning, design and management in the interactions between green and built-up areas, improving the way green areas contribute to the quality of life of urban citizen, to the quality of habitats as a basis for biodiversity and to other aspects of sustainable urban development. 9. Impact of wind and storm on city life and built environment The overall objective of the action was to evaluate and quantify wind effects in dense urban areas with a European wind climate with a view to improving the quality of the urban environment and mitigating windstorm impacts and reducing wind induced failure. 10. Crime Prevention through Urban Design and Planning The objective of this Cost Action is to contribute to structuring existing knowledge and develop innovative approaches on how to build more secure and safe cities.

From the Transport and Urban Development domain I have selected the following actions: 1. Rational design of hybrid organic-inorganic interfaces: the next step towards advanced functional materials Hybrid organic-inorganic (HOI) materials synthesized using soft inorganic chemistry allow a combination of organic and inorganic units at molecular/nanoscale level, thereby opening access to a wide spectrum of multifunctionality not possible with traditional concepts of materials science 2. Smart and green interfaces - from single bubbles and drops to industrial, environmental and biomedical applications (SGI) Bubbles and drops are entities of enormous practical interest since their interfaces are met in numerous industrial processes and applications of every day life. In order to enhance efficiency, the creation of revolutionary Smart interfaces is demanded: interfaces that are easily manipulated with well-controlled size and properties. The objective of this Action is to organize a network of groups from academia and industry in order to identify best strategies and means to produce S&G interfaces. The Actions main deliverables are the networking between groups working on different aspects of S&G interfaces through organization of scientific events, training schools and STSMs, and the industrial interface to market new technologies. 3. Nanostructured materials for solid-state hydrogen storage This action deals with the future of energy storage and aims to set up a competitive and coordinated network capable to define new and unexplored ways for Solid State Hydrogen Storage (SSHS) by innovative and interdisciplinary research within the European Research Area (ERA). This action focuses on SSHS in light-weight nanostructured materials to discover novel guidelines and phenomena for the design of advanced SSHS systems. 4. Fundamental Problems in Quantum Physics The action aims at strengthening the cooperation and boosting the research activity among European groups working in the foundations of quantum mechanics. By combining existing research strengths in mathematical, theoretical and experimental physics and quantum chemistry, major breakthroughs in foundational questions will be achieved. 5. European Scientific Network for Artificial Muscles (ESNAM) The objective of this action is to foster and accelerate long-term advancement of artificial muscle science and technology based on electroactive polymers (EAPs) as smart actuation materials, through a scientific network among leading European institutions and industries.

6. Nano-scale insights in ion beam cancer therapy (Nano-IBCT) Ion beam therapy offers the possibility of excellent dose localization for treatment of malignant tumours, minimizing radiation damage in normal tissue, while maximizing cell-killing within the tumour. 7. Black Holes in a Violent Universe The main objectives of this action are to enhance the understanding of the BH-phenomenon and its impact on the evolution of our Universe, to study the fundamental laws of nature using an multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional approach of BH research, and to use BHs as laboratories to test new physical concepts. 8. Highly Ionised Pulse Plasma Processes The main objective of the action is to make optimal use of new HIPP processes through a greater understanding of the physics of HIPP processes and the development of improved products by superior HIPP coatings. 9. Particles in turbulence The main objective of the action is to support the fundamental research on the statistical properties of particles transported by turbulent flows. 10. Semi-solid Processing of Steels: Thixosteel The main objective is the development of an industrial-applicable process for the thixoforming of steel alloys. This means solving technical obstacles (the engineering aspect) as well as gathering knowledge concerning metallurgy, material science and physics (the basic research aspect). Knowledge obtained from the basic research aspect is an essential requirement for the technical implementation of all kinds of devices in the engineering aspect.

Real-time Monitoring, Surveillance and Control of Road Networks under Adverse Weather Conditions

The main objective of the Action is to understand better the impacts of weather on freeways/motorways as well as on urban networks highway operations and to develop, promote and implement strategies and tools to mitigate those impacts. Adverse weather conditions can have a significant impact on traffic operations and quality of traffic flow. The advanced technologies for collecting and archiving weather data can assist the development of intelligent weather-based traffic management strategies, monitoring and control systems. In view of the paramount importance of weather-responsive tools for realtime traffic surveillance, this project will focus on the development of strategies and techniques aimed at improving the road traffic management and safety. The main goal is to mitigate the negative impacts of adverse weather conditions to traffic flows and to predict the traffic flows under adverse weather conditions. The term of 'adverse weather conditions' refers to the meteorological conditions that decrease the visibility and worsen the pavement conditions. This project will bring together researchers actively working on road networks related issues. It will concentrate on mutually complementary methodologies for modelling, estimation and control that will improve the safety of traffic networks. Traffic flows are highly dependent on weather conditions and researches on this issue are very limited in the literature. Next, traffic flow prediction by reliable algorithms will be addressed in tight connection with the traffic sensor network. This project will address also many issues related to efficient, reliable and quick exchange of information and data over sensor networks for vehicular traffic. The data are received only at boundaries between some segments and averaged within possibly irregular time intervals. Additionally, there are missing data and sensor failures that need to be taken into account. Further, with the developed models and estimators, advanced control strategies will be developed dealing with appropriate fusion of the multiple sensor data.