Governments are faced with countless challenges to maintain conditions of road networks. This is due to financial and physical resource deficiencies of road authorities. Therefore, low-cost automated systems are sought after to alleviate these issues and deliver adequate road conditions for citizens. There have been several attempts at creating such systems and integrating them within Pavement management systems. This paper utilizes replicable deep learning techniques to carry out hotspot analyses on urban road networks highlighting important pavement distress types and associated severities. Following this, analyses were performed illustrating how the hotspot analysis can be carried out to continuously monitor the structural health of the pavement network. The methodology is applied to a road network in Sicily, Italy where there are numerous roads in need of rehabilitation and repair. Damage detection models were created which accurately highlight the location and a severity assessment. Harmonized distress categories, based on industry standards, are utilized to create practical workflows. This creates a pipeline for future applications of automated pavement distress classification and a platform for an integrated approach towards optimizing urban pavement management systems.

Rising concerns about the impacts that the road engineering industry is imposing to the environment have redirected national road authorities to firmly re-consider the sustainability implications of their operations. Lately, though, sustainability has established a forceful correlation with the Circular Economy and its principles. The road engineering industry, therefore, is moving towards more circular approaches. However, this is occurring without the assessment of the potential impacts of such a transition. For this reason, in this study, a composite indicator, namely, Environmental Sustainability and Circularity indicator (ESC_i), for investigating the potential effects that increased circularity could have at the environmental sustainability of asphalt mixtures is developed. It can be utilized as a decision-making support tool from stakeholders involved in both asphalt mixture production and road pavement management. In addition, in this study, four asphalt mixtures with different percentages of Reclaimed Asphalt (RA) were assessed in terms of their “cradle-to-gate” environmental impacts and circularity, by means of Life Cycle Assessment, and Material Circularity Index, respectively. Their fatigue and permanent deformation performances play a key role in the assessment and distinctive results obtained for the asphalt mixtures with increasing RA% and thus, significant environmental benefits and increased circularity are observed after specific RA% thresholds.

The transition of the road engineering industry to a circular way of doing business requires more efficient and sustainable resources, energy, and waste management. The rates in which reclaimed asphalt is being recycled or reused in the asphalt mixture production process constitutes a crucial parameter in this transition. This paper aims at establishing a further step towards the combined circularity and sustainability of asphalt pavements, by introducing a framework for quantifying their Material Circularity Index. The framework is based on the methodology proposed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and accordingly tailored for the context of asphalt pavements. This study, thus, attempts to provide a thorough analysis of the Reclaimed Asphalt’s recycling rates and trends on a European scale and to identify whether the efficiency of the current recycling practices is adequate or not. Moreover, a case study has been undertaken in order to quantify the Material Circularity index of the asphalt pavements forming Italy’s motorway network, following the proposed framework. For representative and accuracy reasons, the Material Circularity index of wearing, binder, and base courses has been calculated separately, and the results interestingly indicate that the base course exhibits the highest rates of circularity.

Road pavements need adequate maintenance to ensure that their conditions are kept in a good state throughout their lifespans. For this to be possible, authorities need efficient and effective databases in place, which have up to date and relevant road condition information. However, obtaining this information can be very difficult and costly and for smart city applications, it is vital. Currently, many authorities make maintenance decisions by assuming road conditions, which leads to poor maintenance plans and strategies. This study explores a pathway to obtain key information on a roadway utilizing drone imagery to replicate the roadway as a 3D model. The study validates this by using structure-from-motion techniques to replicate roads using drone imagery on a real road section. Using 3D models, flexible segmentation strategies are exploited to understand the road conditions and make assessments on the level of degradation of the road. The study presents a practical pipeline to do this, which can be implemented by different authorities, and one, which will provide the authorities with the key information they need. With this information, authorities can make more effective road maintenance decisions without the need for expensive workflows and exploiting smart monitoring of the road structures.

The pavement engineering industry, having realized the significance of the impacts that it imposes on the environment through the production, construction and management of its products and assets, has been driven towards a more sustainable and circular way of operating. This has partly been through asphalt recycling, which is an area that many road authorities have prioritized. However, not all the National Road Authorities (NRAs) and/or sector stakeholders seem to be adequately familiar with the Circular Economy (CE) concept. This paper attempts to assist the transition of NRAs to a more circular way of doing business, by analyzing the current situation of CE within national/regional authorities and NRAs. To do so, a questionnaire was sent to different NRAs and an online search was conducted to identify the ways that NRAs communicate their CE practices. Findings indicate that, although the majority of the NRAs are familiar with CE as a concept, not many actions have been taken so far towards its holistic implementation. Finally, there is a significant lack of CE expertise and communication within these bodies.