Digital Roads
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Engineering
Abstract
This partnership started 10 years ago, when Costain started a collaborative research programme with Highways England and the University of Cambridge that sponsored 27 PhD studentships and led to the establishment of three major efforts: (i) the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, which grew into the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing to develop new methods for infrastructure data collection and analysis using sensors. Our joint work through this activity has collectively shaped national policy; (ii) the EPSRC Materials for Life project that led to a Programme Grant called Resilient Materials for Life, which led to the first UK demonstration of self-healing structures on the A465 road scheme; and (iii) the two EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and the Built Environment, which led to Costain acquiring SSL, a data technology company that has accelerated our technology service transformation. All this steered the team to co-create an integrated and focused partnership programme through co-creation workshops, the outcome of which is the proposed Digital Roads partnership.
Digital Roads is inherently a concept for how to disrupt the roads infrastructure sector in its entirety. We envision a future where every road is made of smart materials, has its own digital twin, and can measure and monitor its own performance. This will make roads considerably cheaper, more reliable, and safer. Our ambition is therefore to make roads (i) out of smart materials aware of their state and properties, (ii) documented in Digital Twins and monitored automatically, (iii) maintained proactively, and (iv) able to serve additional functionalities, therefore bringing automation efficiency to the road network.
The Digital Roads concept rethinks roads as an integrated physical and digital product and associated lifecycle processes that continuously interact with each other to ensure efficiency and strong performance in terms of cost, time, quality, safety, sustainability, and resilience. To support this concept, the grant will therefore investigate how digital twins (for the digital product), smart materials (for the physical product), data science (for the digital lifecycle processes), and robotic monitoring (for the physical lifecycle processes) can work together to create a connected physical and digital product and associated processes with a strong focus on the flow of data between them to leverage their complementarity. For instance, starting from the smart materials: we will use graphene infused concrete coatings to enable self-sensing on both the road surface and the median barrier, that informs the road's digital twin through robotic monitoring, who in turn, along with other pre-existing data, informs the data-science enabled digital processes, and back.
This is very timely and necessary, as, after failing to fully leverage technological advances repeatedly over the last 50 years, all the stars are aligned for the road infrastructure industry to leverage advances in information modelling, machine learning, automation and smart materials that now enable the team to have confidence in deliver the Digital Roads vision.
Beyond the partnership, the Digital Roads team aims to develop outcomes by 2030 to a commercial stage and to follow the same development journey for other road assets such as bridges and tunnels - and eventually the entire strategic road network by 2040. This will allow Costain to create a leading digital service to deliver for Highways England who will be able to demonstrate greater value roads and enable other industries to do the same. This will ensure that roads become safer, benefiting us all; serviceable at lower cost reducing the burden on the tax payer; and maintained more efficiently and sustainably to benefit the stakeholders, society and the environment making the UK a global leader in Digital Roads technology.
Digital Roads is inherently a concept for how to disrupt the roads infrastructure sector in its entirety. We envision a future where every road is made of smart materials, has its own digital twin, and can measure and monitor its own performance. This will make roads considerably cheaper, more reliable, and safer. Our ambition is therefore to make roads (i) out of smart materials aware of their state and properties, (ii) documented in Digital Twins and monitored automatically, (iii) maintained proactively, and (iv) able to serve additional functionalities, therefore bringing automation efficiency to the road network.
The Digital Roads concept rethinks roads as an integrated physical and digital product and associated lifecycle processes that continuously interact with each other to ensure efficiency and strong performance in terms of cost, time, quality, safety, sustainability, and resilience. To support this concept, the grant will therefore investigate how digital twins (for the digital product), smart materials (for the physical product), data science (for the digital lifecycle processes), and robotic monitoring (for the physical lifecycle processes) can work together to create a connected physical and digital product and associated processes with a strong focus on the flow of data between them to leverage their complementarity. For instance, starting from the smart materials: we will use graphene infused concrete coatings to enable self-sensing on both the road surface and the median barrier, that informs the road's digital twin through robotic monitoring, who in turn, along with other pre-existing data, informs the data-science enabled digital processes, and back.
This is very timely and necessary, as, after failing to fully leverage technological advances repeatedly over the last 50 years, all the stars are aligned for the road infrastructure industry to leverage advances in information modelling, machine learning, automation and smart materials that now enable the team to have confidence in deliver the Digital Roads vision.
Beyond the partnership, the Digital Roads team aims to develop outcomes by 2030 to a commercial stage and to follow the same development journey for other road assets such as bridges and tunnels - and eventually the entire strategic road network by 2040. This will allow Costain to create a leading digital service to deliver for Highways England who will be able to demonstrate greater value roads and enable other industries to do the same. This will ensure that roads become safer, benefiting us all; serviceable at lower cost reducing the burden on the tax payer; and maintained more efficiently and sustainably to benefit the stakeholders, society and the environment making the UK a global leader in Digital Roads technology.
Organisations
- University of Cambridge (Lead Research Organisation)
- Kier Group (Collaboration)
- Costain Group (Collaboration)
- Balfour Beatty (Collaboration)
- Telent Technology Services Limited (Collaboration)
- Ramboll (United Kingdom) (Collaboration)
- HIGHWAYS ENGLAND (Collaboration)
- Ordnance Survey (Collaboration)
- AECOM Technology Corporation (Collaboration)
- AMEY PLC (Collaboration)
- Keltbray (Collaboration)
- Bentley Systems UK Ltd (Collaboration)
- Cambridge Graphene Ltd (Collaboration)
- BAM NUTTALL (Collaboration)
- Highways England (Project Partner)
- Costain (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
Publications
Rogage K
(2022)
Beyond digital shadows: Digital Twin used for monitoring earthwork operation in large infrastructure projects.
in AI in civil engineering
Sasidharan M
(2023)
A bridge scour risk management approach to deal with uncertain climate future
in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
Sasidharan M
(2023)
A bridge scour risk management approach to deal with uncertain climate future
Sugiura S
(2023)
Closed-Loop Optimization of Soft Sensor Morphology Using 3D Printing of Electrically Conductive Hydrogel
in Advanced Intelligent Systems
Description | FUTUREROADS |
Amount | € 5,226,406 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 101034337 |
Organisation | Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | Global |
Start | 08/2021 |
End | 08/2026 |
Title | GeoSpark: Sparking up Point Cloud Segmentation with Geometry Clue |
Description | GeoSpark is a Plug-in module that incorporates Geometry clues into the network to Spark up feature learning and downsampling. It improves feature modeling by allowing the network to learn from both local points and neighboring geometry partitions, resulting in an enlarged data-tailored receptive field. Additionally, it utilizes geometry partition information to guide the downsampling process, resulting in better preservation of key points throughout the network. |
Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | This model is currently under review for an academic publication, and is expected to facilitate the automated point cloud segmentation of highway assets, and thereby to contribute to Digital Roads data preparation (WP5). |
Title | Labelled dataset for an A-Road |
Description | This dataset comprises a labelled point cloud dataset representing part of the the A11 road in England. The labelling captures the major assets/defects both on and off the road. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | This dataset is of significant value to members of the DR programme, as it can facilitate the data preparation tasks required for work packages 1 and 5 (a prerequisite for building the Digital Twin). on the Digital Roads PP |
Title | Using road design priors to improve large-scale 3D road scene segmentation |
Description | This data analysis model contributes to the improved detection of most road object types, enabling automatic digitisation for roads and reducing related costs. It is based on training a lightweight deep learning network together with data pre-processing to facilitate a broader range of highly detected objects. |
Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | This model is currently under review for an academic publication, and is expected to facilitate the automated detection and segmentation of road assets, and thereby speed up the data preparation work needed by work packages 1 and 5 on Digital Roads PP |
Description | Future Roads - AECOM Ltd |
Organisation | AECOM Technology Corporation |
Department | AECOM, Nottingham, UK |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a Fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Amey OW Limited |
Organisation | Amey PLC |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Provide a Fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of the fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - BAM Nuttall |
Organisation | BAM Nuttall |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Balfour Beatty |
Organisation | Balfour Beatty |
Department | Civil Engineering |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Bentley Systems |
Organisation | Bentley Systems UK Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Keltbray Holdings Limited |
Organisation | Keltbray |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Kier |
Organisation | Kier Group |
Department | Kier Construction Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - National Highways |
Organisation | Highways England |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | National Highways supported the Application for the MSCA Fellowship |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of Fellows, participation in the Supervisory Board and Steering Committee. |
Impact | In progress |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Future Roads - Ordnance Survey |
Organisation | Ordnance Survey |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Ramboll UK Ltd |
Organisation | Ramboll UK |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Telent |
Organisation | Telent Technology Services Limited |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Versarian |
Organisation | Cambridge Graphene Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Providing a fellow to carry out research |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellow, participation in events and induction of fellow |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads Fellow - Costain |
Organisation | Costain Group |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | The partnership with Costain was fundamental to the application for the MSCA funding they are the original funding partner. |
Collaborator Contribution | Supervision of fellows. Participation in Induction and training. |
Impact | in progress |
Start Year | 2021 |
Title | Multi-sensing point electromechanical impedance measurement device |
Description | a multi-sensing point electromechanical impedance measurement device using lead zirconate titanate sensors for civil structure health monitoring |
Type Of Technology | Detection Devices |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Impact | The device is a multi-sensing point electromechanical impedance measurement device using lead zirconate titanate sensors for civil structure health monitoring. The device has allowed the project to embrace IOT concepts, and has the capabilities for remote sensing for structural health monitoring for civil engineering structures. It has been used to collect data remotely, and obtain different responses during both the curing and the hardening period of the 3D concrete printed structure. |
Description | "Digital Twinning for the Built Environment", Invited Lecture at the 3rd TEE BIM Conference, 12 October 2022, Athens, Greece (delivered online) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | "Digital Twinning for the Built Environment", Invited Lecture at the 3rd TEE BIM Conference, 12 October 2022, Athens, Greece (delivered online). Presenting Digital Roads as part of the wider Digital Infrastructure. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twinning for the Built Environment", Invited Talk at the Digital Twin Hub Gemini Call, Connected Places Catapult, 6 September 2022, UK (delivered online) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Presenting Digital Roads in the wider subject of Digital Infratructure. "Digital Twinning for the Built Environment", Invited Talk at the Digital Twin Hub Gemini Call, Connected Places Catapult, 6 September 2022, UK (delivered online) |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twinning for the Built Environment", Invited Talk at the IPA Learning Hour, Infrastructure Projects Authority, 7 September 2022, UK (delivered online) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | "Digital Twinning for the Built Environment", Invited Talk at the IPA Learning Hour, Infrastructure Projects Authority, 7 September 2022, UK (delivered online) Presenting Digital Roads as part of wider Digital Infrastructure. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the "SophIA summit" international symposium on recent advances in artificial intelligence and its applications, 24 November 2022, Sophia Antipolis, France |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the "SophIA summit" international symposium on recent advances in artificial intelligence and its applications, 24 November 2022, Sophia Antipolis, France. Presenting Digital Roads in the wider context of Digital Infrastructure. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the 3rd Digital Twin Global Forum (Beihang University, China) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Key note speech regarding the benefits of digital twins. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the 3rd International Conference on Natural Hazards & Infrastructure, 5 July 2022, Athens, Greece |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the 3rd International Conference on Natural Hazards & Infrastructure, 5 July 2022, Athens, Greece. To disseminate information about the Digital Roads project in the Context of Digital Twins in the Built Environment. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the CSCE Conference on Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies: The Digital Reality of Tomorrow, 25 August 2022, Fredericton, Canada |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the CSCE Conference on Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies: The Digital Reality of Tomorrow, 25 August 2022, Fredericton, Canada. Presenting Digital Roads in the Wider Digital Infrastructure. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the Conference on "Thinking the future LNEC, reflecting on its past", National Laboratory of Civil Engineering, 26 September 2022, Lisbon, Portugal |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | "Digital Twins for the Built Environment", Keynote Lecture at the Conference on "Thinking the future LNEC, reflecting on its past", National Laboratory of Civil Engineering, 26 September 2022, Lisbon, Portugal Presenting Digital Roads in the wider Digital Infrastructure |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | "Exploring How Digital Twins, Smart Materials Data Science and Robotic Monitoring Can Develop A Connected Physical And Road Infrastructure System", Keynote Lecture at the Digital Highways: Preparing for Smart Road Infrastructure event, Institute of Government and Public Policy, 1 November 2022, London, |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | "Exploring How Digital Twins, Smart Materials Data Science and Robotic Monitoring Can Develop A Connected Physical And Road Infrastructure System", Keynote Lecture at the Digital Highways: Preparing for Smart Road Infrastructure event, Institute of Government and Public Policy, 1 November 2022, London, Presenting Digital Roads. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | CRH Innovation Centre for Sustainable Construction, De Klencke 10-12, 1083 HL Amsterdam, 24 January 2023. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | The University of Cambridge Smart Materials team made a 2-day visit to the CRH Innovation Centre for Sustainable Construction. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Centre of Excellence talking shop Concrete talk show |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | The Digital Roads Smart Materials team , led by Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa presented their work at the Centre of Excellence talking shop Concrete talk show. Professor Abir presented the DR project initiative, Dr. Damian Palin from DR project presented his work on smart bio inspired materials, and Dr. Hussameldin Taha from the DR project presented his work on non-destructive testing on cementitious materials. The presentations were held online. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Digital Roads Launch event |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Attendees from the 3 partners, University of Cambridge, Costain and National Highways as well as partner organisations form Future Roads attended the launch day for Digital Roads, presenting the project, its aims and planned outputs. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://drf.eng.cam.ac.uk/digital-roads-prosperity-partnership |
Description | Digital Roads of the Future Lunchtime Clinics - Weekly lecture series |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | A weekly series of informative one hour lectures and talks focused on the Digital Roads of the Future themes: Digital Twins, Smart Materials, Data Science, Automation and Robotics and Sustainability. Talks are held at the Civil Engineering Building, University of Cambridge. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
Description | FIBE2-CDT guest lecture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Delivered a guest lecture to MRes (Master of Research) students about the DR programme, including it's various strands with a focus on the theme of resilience. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
URL | https://www.fibe-cdt.eng.cam.ac.uk/ |
Description | Future Roads - Technical Training - Automation and Robotics |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | 2 day Workshop for Future Roads Fellows to the principle issues of Automation and Robotics in Civil Engineering. 1 day lectures, one on practical workshop |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Technical Training - Data Science |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | A 2 day workshop for Future Roads Fellows. Introduction to Data Science, arranging lectures and external lecturers (Particle Filtering for Map-matching, An introduction to Machine Learning, Hierarchical Modelling: Prognosis and logistics, Towards Physics-constrained Transfer Learning with Bayesian Multilevel Models ) and 1 day practical session |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Technical Training - Digital Twins |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | 2 Day workshop for Future Roads Fellows introduction to Digital Twins theme: Day 1 lectures, day 2 practical exercise. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads - Technical Training - Smart Materials |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | The Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Fellowship FUTUREROADS is a training fellowship that is a sister programme to Digital Roads. The Digital Roads Researchers developed a 2-day technical workshop for the Fellows to introduce their theme of research and address some of the challenges in their research theme. The objective for Digital Roads was to explore interest from the Fellow in supporting research in Digital Roads. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads Cohort 2 Challenges |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Meeting with Future Roads Partners to set industry Challenges for Cohort 2 Future Roads Fellowships around the Digital Roads of the Future themes, Digital Twins, Smart Materials, Data Science, Automation and Robotics and Sustainability. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads Cohort 3 Challenges & Future Planning |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | 01 December 2022, Madingley Hall, Cambridge. Digital Roads Researchers and Academic Theme leads met with industry to develop challenges for the Future Roads Cohort 3 Fellowships to address. Followed by discussions and proposals for future funding applications for the FIBE3 CDT and potential expansion of Future Roads and the National Highways Roads Research Alliance. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads Induction Training |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | The Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Fellowship Future Roads is a training fellowship for post doctorate fellows. Part of that training programme includes a 2 week induction programme that the Digital Roads Researchers participated in both as presenters and instructors. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Future Roads Workshop |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Project partners and potential future collaborators attended our event to hear about the progress so far in the Digital Roads and Future Roads programmes and to discuss future funding opportunities and priorities as well as research topics for future collaboration. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Highways UK - panel discussion, 3rd November 2022, Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | "Shaping collaborative research partnerships to develop roads of the future" - panel discussion with members from National Highways, Costain and the University of Cambridge to introduce the wider Digital Roads of the Future (Digital Roads and Future Roads) initiative and the Roads Research Alliance to the wider transport industry and practinioners. This raised the awareness of the research programme and led to more organisations expressing interest to join/engage with the wider programme. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Invited Panelist |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Invited panelist and postgraduate student mentor at the Forum for AI Research Students, held as part of the Forty-second SGAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in December 2022 (in Cambridge). The mentoring session involved introducing PhD students across the UK to the work that is being carried out in the DR project, and mentoring them on the challenges/opportunities in pursuing a PhD in related sectors. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | http://www.bcs-sgai.org/fairs2022/ |
Description | Korean Expressway Corporation Visit |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Korean Expressway Corporation's visit to the University of Cambridge, Civil Engineering Building, 7A JJ Thompson Avenue Cambridge, CB3 0FA, 24 October 2022. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | National Highways Development Centre at Moreton-in-Marsh, 17 August 2023. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Visit to the National Highways Development Centre. A team from DR (Rachel Judson, Thomas George-Thuruthel, Nzebo Richard Anvo, and Damian Palin) visited the National Highways Development Centre at Moreton-in-Marsh. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | National Highways Pavement Team Workshop |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | As part of the DR project's WP2, the WP2 team conducted a workshop with the National Highways pavement team on the 19th of July to prioritise the needs of NH, in order to incorporate them DR research activities. At this workshop, Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa gave a presentation about the DR project and presented the different research topics which were identified for Smart Materials |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | New Roads Research Alliance created |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | A new research alliance is being created to support the combined Future Roads/Digital Roads research programme which will help shape the development of innovation in the highways industry over the next five years. his saw National Highways and some 20 companies from its supply chain have joined forces with the University of Cambridge to define and develop a portfolio of innovative projects for the roads sector. The event was held in Cambridge University, St Catharine's College in September 2022, and a press release followed reaching to wider sector and general public. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://nationalhighways.co.uk/article/leading-lights-in-highways-industry-join-forces-to-drive-rese... |
Description | PEARL at University College London 24 May 2022, London. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Dr Damian Palin was a panel member for the topics "Solutions for the construction and assessment of sustainable pavements" and "Solutions for smartening service and maintenance of pavements" at the "Saferup! Showcase event" at PEARL (University College London). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Press release - Vision set out for a once-in-a-lifetime digital revolution that will fundamentally change National Highways' roads, September 2021 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Press release setting out the vision for the Digital Roads Strategy for National Highways, highlighting how the Digital Roads research aligns and can revolutionise the future of how we design, build, maintain and operate the strategic road network. This sparked wider interest in the research activities and requests for future engagement. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vision-set-out-for-a-once-in-a-lifetime-digital-revolution-that-w... |
Description | Professor Daman Panesar |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | On the 11th of Nov, Professor Daman Panesar, from the department of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, Visited the smart materials team of the DR project. During the visit professor Daman gave a talk at the weekly Friday clinic. Dr Damian Palin and Dr. Hussameldin Taha from the DR smart materials team gave presentations to professor Daman on smart bioinspired materials, and civil structures non-destructive testing, respectively. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Site visit/workshop at KOREC Group |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | This was a site visit and workshop at the KOREC Group, a company that specialises in land surveying and mapping. Many members from the DR team attended this workshop/visit to look into the details of their land surveying work and to discuss future collaboration opportunities. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Traffex UK - panel discussion, 15th June 2022, Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Panel discussion with members from National Highways, Costain and the University of Cambridge to introduce Digital Roads and the potential for industry, client and academic collaboration to the wider transport industry and practinioners. This raised the awareness of the research programme and led to more organisations expressing interest to join/engage with the wider programme. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Visit to Ringway |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | The Digital Roads Smart Marterials team and others were invited by Eurovia/Ringway & JLUK to visit their premises in Waltham Cross. During the visit, Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa gave an introduction to the DRF project, and a lab tour was organised for the group. The team also discussed future collaboration pathways. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Visit to Stanton Precast Limited |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | The Digital Roads Smart Materials team with Mike Ambrose from National Highways organised a site visit to the Stanton Precast Limited precast company. During the visit, Stanton Precast gave the team a tour around their pre-casting factory, and both the Stanton team and DR team discussed innovations opportunities which can be introduced to the sector. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |