Efforts to make our roads more resilient are happening across many sectors—including business, state, federal, and local governments. Still, much of the innovation in the field comes out of research universities. Across North America, many of those schools have established research centers in partnership with state and federal government and industries as well.

A scan of the work they’re doing now supplies clues to innovations we’ll be seeing on the roads in the coming months and years. Here’s a glimpse at the recent and upcoming efforts from some of the leading academic institutions focused on road resilience.

Arizona State University - Much of the work at Arizona State’s Center for Efficient Vehicles and Sustainable Transportation Systems infrastructure research group centers on multimodal efficiency. In addition, it is investigating the infrastructure needed for plugin vehicles, including charging station technologies and the impact of plug-in vehicles on the electrical grid along with the operational conditions impacting the deployment of energy-efficient vehicles and transportation systems.

In Arizona State’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Associate Professor Mikhail Chester is focused on “on the increasingly complex challenges for infrastructure in the Anthropocene” and “on infrastructure resilience to climate change and extreme events”. Look for his research on “Leveraging SETS (social, ecological, and technological systems) Resilience Capabilities for Safe-to-Fail Infrastructure under Climate Change” to come out in 2022.

Auburn University - With the latest renewal of Auburn’s test asphalt track, the National Center for Asphalt Technology is sharply focused on balanced mix and balanced mix design. This new track, it’s eighth, has a significant commitment to recycled material. In the fall the institute hosted the National Balanced Mix Design Implementation Conference and is planning webinars and workshops in the next few months about its implementation.

Assistant Professor Dr. Ben Bowers’ research is “focused predominantly on asphalt materials and pavement geotechnics, with special attention paid to sustainable, resilient, and cost effective techniques”. Bowers has been collaborating with Associate Professor Dr. Jeff LaMondia to quantify road resilience performance so that it can be incorporated into calculations of expected total cost of ownership.

California State University - Los Angeles - Cal State’s Mehran Mazari is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at California State University Los Angeles focused on Infrastructure Materials, Sustainable and Resilient Transportation Infrastructure, and Applied Data Science and Machine Learning. He has been actively involved in several federal and state-funded research projects. Mehran is the editorial board member of CSU Journal of Sustainability and Climate Change, and the handling editor for the Transportation Research Record (TRR) of the Transportation Research Board. Dr. Mazari is the faculty director of Sikand Center for Sustainable and Intelligent Infrastructure (Sikand SITI Center) and founding director of the Sustainable Infrastructure Materials Research Lab (SIM-Lab) at California State University Los Angeles.

The Sikand Center for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure and the Sustainable Infrastructure Materials research lab are researching practices that support the long-term viability and well-being of communities as well as studying the resilience of infrastructure systems. One of its current projects is focused on developing draft specifications and guidelines for the Resilience and Sustainability of Underground Transportation Infrastructure. In another effort, the research group is focused on evaluating the resilience of transportation infrastructure by using satellite data and remote sensing. The group is also working on the development of a data-driven resiliency performance framework for road infrastructure using advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms as part of their infrastructure resilience initiative. 

Georgia Institute of Technology - Georgia Tech’s Infrastructure Research Group’s efforts on resilience is focused on the planning and decision-making process. As part of a partnership with the Georgia Department of Transportation, IRG@GT is producing resilience‐enhancing policies, business processes, and procedures. The group is developing tools targeted at enhancing the resilience of the transportation system, including its cyber components. It’s also aiming to actively train the relevant workforce on the principles and tools it’s creating. Among their recent research, the Infrastructure Research Group has published, “Resilience in Transportation Planning and Decision Making” and “Black Swan Event Planning for Urban System Resilience.” The Group is led by Dr. Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy, Associate Chair, Global Engineering Leadership & Entrepreneurship, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Iowa State University - Iowa State’s infrastructure research also has a strong emphasis on materials. A November 2021 paper from the Institute for Transportation evaluated the effectiveness of Geogrids and geotextiles, proposing modified methods for their deployment that lead to increased service life, reduced thickness requirement of pavements, and lowered maintenance costs. Additionally, Dr. Halil Ceylan’s recent research at the Institute has covered innovative materials and methods for improving road resilience including 2021 papers on “Self-Heating Electrically Conductive Concrete” and “Determining Pavement Design Criteria for Recycled Aggregate Base and Large Stone Subbase.”

Rutgers University - Rutgers Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation – led by Professor Ali Maher, Director, Rutgers’ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering - has a heavy focus on digital twin and big data modeling for both infrastructure lifecycle management and urban mobility. Its materials research has focused on low-carbon concrete. Other recent research has included investigating advanced materials for sustainable, rapid earthquake recovery for bridges as well as testing AI-based technologies for infrastructure monitoring and resiliency analysis.

Texas A&M University - Led by Agency Director, Gregory Winfree, Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute covers many resilience-related focus areas from its Construction, Geotechnical and Structures Division and Major Highway Structures Program to its Materials and Pavements Division and Roadway Design Program. It’s researchers are active thought leaders – for instance, see senior research scientist Jolanda Prozzi’s recent article, “Storm Resiliency a Pay-Now Or Pay-Later Proposition.”

The Institute’s Center for Infrastructure Renewal is led by Interim Director, Anand Puppala, Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering. Recognizing that “Infrastructure systems are only as good as the foundation on which they are built,” the Center’s Geotechnical and Unbound Materials Innovation Lab allows researchers to investigate soils, stabilization, and rehabilitation techniques that can be implemented in both the short and long term.

University of New Hampshire - The Center for Infrastructure Resilience to Climate at the University of New Hampshire is focused on extreme weather, with a particular focus on the harsh conditions of the Northeast. Much of their current work is directed at the consequences of rising sea levels on coastal roads and their remedies. Led by Dr. Jo Sias, professor of civil and environmental engineering, the Center recently won a $1.8 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to study how and why coastal hazards like excessive flooding are causing roads to crack and crumble and find ways to protect them.

University of Toronto -The Centre for Resilience of Critical Infrastructure (CRCI) is an initiative of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering to advance the field of infrastructure engineering and the understanding and practice of infrastructure resilience. The Centre includes a focus on City Resilience and Infrastructure Systems Dependency Management - an effort to create effective and practicable solutions for urban infrastructure resilience planning. It also hosts leaders like Adjunct Professor Alexander Hay, an expert in infrastructure resilience and protection planning, founder of Southern Harbour Limited, an infrastructure resilience and protection planning consultancy and author of the 2021 book, Planning Resilient Infrastructure Systems. Among the Centre’s current research is a Resilience-Protection Comparison: a study comparing the cost to operational effectiveness of protection and resilience requirements.

University of Waterloo - University of Waterloo in Ontario houses the Centre of Pavement and Transportation Technology. The organization’s research ranged from characterization and modeling of the behavior of construction materials, smart pavement materials and structures and optimization of the use of recycled materials in sustainable infrastructure system to sustainable long-life pavements and the advancement and optimization of conventional pavement technology like the deployment of advanced wireless technologies for automatic field data collection and generation of pavement performance data bases. The Centre is led by Dr Hassan Baaj and maintains affiliation with academic leaders like Dr. Susan Tighe whose road resilience research focuses on areas such as sustainable pavement engineering and management and the evaluation of climate change of roads.