Enhancing Policy & Action for a Safe Mobility
The International Road Federation (IRF) and Michelin will be leading a new working group on safe mobility in the framework of the Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) initiative. The WG was launched on 15th February at the SuM4All consortium meeting.
Safe Mobility remains a “hart to abate” challenge, especially when it comes to road safety. Road crashes result in an estimated 1.35 million deaths and 50 million injuries worldwide per year.
While road safety knowledge has improved over recent decades, there is still a need to enhance decision-making when selecting and applying effective road safety action.
Against this background, a new UN Decade of Action for Road Safety has kicked off in 2021 setting up the ambitious target of reducing road traffic deaths and injuries by at least 50% by 2030.
As a community of experts, SuM4All platform has an incredible opportunity to contribute and to help further the safety agenda. Building on the GRA and its holistic approach, this new SuM4All WG led by the International Road Federation (IRF) & Michelin will provide actionable policy guidance in the form of a set of policy recommendations, derived from policy measures contained in the GRA. The policy recommendations and guidance will be backed-up by an inventory of available tools and concrete case studies demonstrating how to turn policy into action and by what means and steps. This will help shape national and local-level regulations and action.
Building on this first phase, in 2023 the group plans to kick off phase 2 to implement/challenge this approach with pilot case studies, at national level (country) and at local level (city).
All this in synergy and close collaboration with other key initiatives and bodies such us UNRSC, GRSF, THE PEP, The MDBs and the Regional Road Safety Observatories.
Introducing Valerann, IRF Start-up Label Winner
The IRF Start-up Label is a recently launched IRF initiative designed to support high-potential mobility start-ups, help them showcase their credibility, and further build trust with their clients, investors, and employees. Winners of the label will benefit from IRF’s official endorsement for three consecutive years in which they will gain professional mentoring, exposure to relevant stakeholders in the IRF Network and assistance with bespoke actions aligned with start-up’s priorities.
In 2021, the International Road Federation partnered with the FIA Smart Cities Global Start-up Contest to give one of the 18 finalists of the Season 5 Contest the possibility to obtain its IRF Start-up Label. As a result, IRF together with the jury of international experts comprising representatives of FIA Smart Cities Partners, FIA Member Clubs and other organisations, selected Valerann as the recipient of the label.
When it comes to transforming mobility, data becomes a key element to assess and quantify the gap between where we stand and where we want to be – but that is not enough. In order to fully transform mobility, we need more innovative companies to change the way we think, we plan, we design, we deliver, and we manage transport systems. We believe Valerann to be one of them, we see their potential to think out of the box and bring that innovation we need, by transforming data into intelligence.
In a nutshell, Valerann is an innovative cutting-edge Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) SaaS company that empowers control centres and road operators around the world by providing an intelligent traffic management platform, Lanternn by Valerann™.
We asked the Valerann team some questions about their product and what they are trying to solve, but most importantly from where the true essence of Valerann comes. Here is what we got:
1. Could you tell us in a few words what Valerann is about?
Valerann stands for certainty through data. Today, road operators have access to near limitless data. Yet, time after time we see these operators resort to manual and labour-intensive methods to identify, locate, verify and respond to events. Most operators still use phone calls as their primary means of detection and patrol as their main way of verifying accidents. This is not because they do not have access to data. Rather, it is because they do not trust the data to make critical decisions; the loops are not calibrated, the cameras are not aligned, open sources are too noisy… there is always a (good!) reason why they do not rely on these individual sources of data to make life or death decisions. We fix that. We created a platform that automatically collects, analyses, fuses, and verifies all of the relevant data sources. This allows the operators to make faster and better decisions, in real time; saving lives, time, and money.
2. To understand it better, could you give us one example of a problem one of your clients has encountered and how has Valerann helped him?
One of our clients had needed to improve their response to incidents. We worked with them to analyse 10 years of historical data and created a machine learning module that predicted what areas had the highest likelihood of an accident given traffic flow, weather, visibility, road works, time of day, etc. This helped them deploy their patrol more effectively, prioritise response more deliberately, focus their attention to the right place at the right time, which ultimately helped reduce reaction times and increase safety
3. Now let’s talk about the Valerann team. How was Valerann born and why is your team the perfect fit for the solution you propose?
Valerann was created 5 years ago. We actually started by looking into the world of in-road sensors to help collect high fidelity data from the road, but soon understood that the problem was not the lack of data, it was the lack of trust in existing data. We have built our team around this concept with experienced tech executives, PhDs, ITS experts and more. However, our team is not yet complete. We are hiring across the board, so go check out our website!
4. What are your expectations as an IRF Start-up Label Winner?
The recognition from IRF is already a huge boost to our credibility and visibility in the market. It is an honour. We hope that we can also work with IRF to connect with partners who would find our offering valuable and help us connect with the right people there to smoothen the process.
5. Where do you see Valerann in 10 years?
In 10 years Valerann will allow operators of all sizes; from National motorway authorities to small municipalities the ability to actively manage their road; making it safer, greener, and less costly. We will do this through a completely virtual control centre that sources (anonymous) information from vehicles, social media, navigation apps, and public contributors. No setup time, no integration fees. Go on the Valerann website, select your road areas, and we will instantly generate your virtual control centre and allow you to start managing your road
Michael Vardi
CBO at Valerann
Gabriel Jacobson
CEO at Valerann
Daniel Yakovich
COO at Valerann
Ran Katzir
CTO at Valerann
CRISPS Newsletter – February 2022
Team introduction – Gemma Mathieson (PhD Candidate)
Gemma has 10 years of industry experience in asset management, where she specialised in asset deterioration modelling and lifecycle planning across the asset classes of pavements, 3 waters pipe renewals and bridges. Gemma has completed both a Master of Engineering Studies in Transportation and a Bachelor of Engineering in Engineering Science at the University of Auckland. She is currently studying towards a Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering.
Gemma’s role in the project is to analyse the various data sets, calibrate the HDM-4 models and develop new model formats.
Deterioration Model Development
This phase of the project was designed to develop, calibrate, and test models to predict the performance of Modified Epoxy Chip Seals (MECS) and Modified Epoxy Asphalt Surfaces (MEAS) under changing climates and traffic, based on data collected from existing roads and trials. This includes both the calibration of the existing HDM-4 models, as well as the development of new models.
Although the performance of modified epoxy surfacings has been demonstrated through trials in New Zealand and, in the case of MEAS, is now routinely used in service, the trial or in-service data in Ethiopia will only become available in later years. The following figure depicts the overview of the approach to be adopted to recognise this limitation.
There are two potentially comparable data sets available to the research, one in New Zealand and one in Ethiopia. The New Zealand dataset, identified in yellow in the figure on the right, is the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) dataset. This dataset contains approximately 20 years of data, across different traffic loadings and climatic regions within New Zealand. The Ethiopia dataset, identified in turquoise, is the Highway Development and Management (HDM) study trials.
A comparative analysis of these two datasets will allow for the establishment of relationships that quantify/model the relative performance between New Zealand roads and Ethiopian roads with reasonably similar characteristics for traditional chipseals and asphalt surfacings.
The next step, identified in blue, is to understand the relationship, in terms of improved performance, between the traditional surfacings in the New Zealand LTPP study and the modified epoxy trials in New Zealand. The epoxy laboratory studies will also be used as appropriate to help develop these relationships.
Finally, given that the relative performance of the New Zealand LTPP surfacings to both the Ethiopian surfacings and the New Zealand modified epoxy surfacings will be known, a calibration or adjustment factor, identified in red, will be determined to predict the performance of modified epoxy surfacings in Ethiopia.
Trial and Laboratory Test Results
On the 14th December 2021, Dr Theuns Henning (University of Auckland) and David Alabaster (New Zealand Transport Agency) presented the performance results from laboratory tests, trials and application of the epoxy modified bitumen. The results showed that epoxy modified bitumen significantly outperforms traditional bitumen in all tests undertaken thus far. These laboratory tests will be invaluable to understand the relative performance difference between traditional surfaces and the Epoxy Modified Binders.
The photos below show an example of the re-orientation and embedment test comparing traditional 180/200 bitumen (left) and epoxy bitumen (right). The test simulated 12 hours of traffic at 35 degrees Celsius.
Another test performed in the laboratory was a fatigue test. The following graph shows the resulting cycles to failure of six different OGPA samples. The samples included four epoxy mixes, unmodified 80/100 bitumen, and Sytrenebutadiene-styrene (SBS) polymer. All of the mixes containing epoxy outperformed the latter two. The 75% and 100% epoxy samples reached the maximum number of cycles without failure. This suggests the epoxy modified OGPA will significantly outperform traditional OGPA in terms of long term durability.
References
Bagshaw, S. A., Herrington, P. R., & Wu, J. P. (2015). Preliminary examination of chipseals prepared with epoxy-modified bitumen. Construction and Building Materials, 88, 232–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2015.04.003
Wu, J. P., Herrington, P. R., & Alabaster, D. (2019). Long-term durability of epoxy-modified open-graded porous asphalt wearing course. International Journal of Pavement Engineering, 20(8), 920–927. https://doi.org/10.1080/10298436.2017.1366764
