Road Pavements for Reduction of Climate and Safety Risks

Dear colleagues,

Traffic safety depends on the complex relationship between various components: the driver, the vehicle, the environment, and the road infrastructure. According to the statistics, the driver’s behavior would appear to be the most important component, since it is responsible for the majority of accidents.

Any time human behavior is a factor, predicting how drivers will respond to road conditions is difficult at best. Variables such as roadway geometry, visibility issues, pavement surface conditions, weather, and the like, further make it difficult to quantify the safety of a particular roadway.

While we cannot control human response to road conditions, we can control the properties of pavement surfaces to help the reduction of crash probability.

The condition of the pavement surface affects deeply the road safety. Texture and roughness play an important role in providing an acceptable and ideal pavement condition. The frictional properties of the surface course affect its resistance to tires, helping to keep vehicles on the road when brakes are applied. This is particularly important in wet conditions, when a thin water film on the roadway decreases contact between tire and pavement. In this condition, the texture and porosity of the surface course help to provide a path to channel water away from tires and to reduce the hydroplaning phenomenon as well as the splash and spray effect.

The condition of the pavement surface is greatly affected by climate change, which has the potential to impact both long and short term road pavement performance. Therefore, to maintain pavements within the same serviceability as before, their maintenance strategies need to be re-assessed and, if necessary, changed. Hence, it is an urgent task to incorporate climate resilience into pavements design and management.

This Special Issue will present the most recent research advances in this field, to evaluate how these results can improve functional and structural performances of pavement surface coatings in response to climate and safety risks.

In particular, the topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Methods and techniques for road pavement design, construction, maintenance, rehabilitation, and management;
• Use of innovative and/or recycled materials in road surface treatments for road maintenance and safety;
• Pavement surface characteristics and performances;
• Characterization of the pavement surface using innovative techniques;
• Pavement-vehicle interaction and safety issues;
• Methods and techniques for the study of climate change adaptation for road pavements.