"ASSET MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE" Call

This trans-national research programme was launched by the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR) in 2014. The funding partners of this cross-border funded Joint Research Programme are the National Road Administrations (NRA) of Belgium-Flanders, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom and Austria.

The call had two sub-themes, Road Asset Management and Road Maintenance, with the first one that comprised a research project about social benefits and costs.

ISABELA - Integration of Social Aspects and Benefits into Life-cycle Asset Management

The main objective of the project is the definition of a holistic asset management framework for social key performance indicators (S-KPIs) and social benefit modeling in form of social effects (monetary and non-monetary), social backlog and social risk. ISABELA provides an essential enhancement for the life-cycle-assessment of maintenance strategies and enables to incorporate social aspects and benefits into classical asset management.

"EFFECTIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT MEETING FUTURE CHALLENGES" Call

Effective Asset Management meeting Future Challenges is the third cross-border funded joint resarch programme which started with the decision of National Road Administrations to collaborate on the joint research programme. 13 National Road Administrations from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom are the Programme owners.

Seven road research projects have been awarded funding and two of them share the same field of research: environmental performance indicators (E-KPIs).

EVITA – Environmental Performance Indicators for the Total Road Infrastructure Assets

The project is paying a special attention to the development of easily understandable Environmental key performance indicators (E-KPIs). It also aims at identifying existing best practice in the implementation of KPIs to managing the full range of road infrastructure components (pavements, structures, road furniture, etc.).

The primary benefit of this project is on the one hand to provide an applicable solution for the environmental assessment of different road infrastructure assets and on the other hand to describe the expectations of different stakeholders in form of objective indicators. Furthermore the results could be used as an integrated part in the asset management processes of the road owners and road operators.

SBAKPI – Strategic Benchmarking and Key Performance Indicator

This project is designed to provide National Road Administrations with a tool to examine the Social and Environmental Performance of their organisation in relation to other National Road Administrations. The Benchmarking Framework is designed to provide a set of Core and Secondary KPI that can be in future expanded and developed as the Environmental and Social agenda is developed in Europe to face the challenges of climate change, population growth etc.

The Sustainability, Environmental and Social issues associated with Strategic Road Networks are becoming increasingly important, a framework for Benchmarking and the identification and use of relevant Environmental and Social Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) would be very helpful for European NRAs.