The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute will host approximately 400 transportation experts from around the world at the ninth International Conference on Managing Pavement Assets to be held in Arlington, Virginia, this May 18 through 21.
The event, which is held every three to four years, will be in the United States for the first time since 2001. It marks the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s debut as host of the conference.
“We had to compete for it and we got it, and the process was competitive,” said Gerardo Flintsch, director of the institute’s Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure and a professor with the Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, part of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering. “It’s a good way to show our leadership in pavement research.”
The conference will bring together pavement design and management engineers, consultants, and companies to define “next-generation” methods in road construction as well as road maintenance and upkeep, said Flintsch. The conference will address sustainability, accountability, and improved pavement performance.
In addition to research presentations, the conference will include workshops and technical programs on construction, maintenance, and operations of roads.
The four-day event will feature keynote addresses by Sam Savage, a professor at Stanford University; Kathryn Zimmerman, president of Applied Pavement Technology Inc.; and Andre Molenaar, professor emeritus at Delft University of Technology.
The conference will include an executive panel with Gregory G. Nadeau, acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration; Oscar de Buen Richkarday, president of the World Road Association; Jorge Sales Gomes, CEO of Brisa Innovation and Technology; and Charles Kilpatrick, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Conference planners hope to offer tours of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s Northern Virginia Connected-vehicle Test Bed located along the Interstate 66 corridor near Fairfax, Virginia, and the Smart Road, located in Blacksburg and maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Flintsch expects half of those who attend the May 2015 conference will come from overseas.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute conducts research to save lives, time, money, and protect the environment. One of the seven university-level research institutes created by Virginia Tech to answer national challenges, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute continually advances transportation through innovation and has impacted public policy on the national and international level.
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