The RISC '97 Road and Safety Research in Europe Conference was held in Brussels on 5-6th May 1997. The event was organised by the European Commission (DGVII) in close collaboration with the Form of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL) and the Forum of European Road Safety Institutes (FERSI). The principal aims were: to present the state of the art in road research; and to provide input to the planning of the European Community Fifth Framework Programme. It was noted that many billions of ECUs are spent in Europe each year on road construction and maintenance and also as a result of congestion and safety related problems. Therefore, well targeted research would make a significant contribution to reducing the overall cost and enhancing the effect of investment in the area. RISC '97 was attended by around 200 participants from almost 30 different countries, with key interested parties from both research and policy making areas being involved. This allowed for a number of important goals to be achieved: a) Presentation of the infrastructure and safety related road transport research projects currently operating in the Fourth Framework Transport Research Programme and under the COST Transport Framework, along with associated FEHRL and FERSI projects; b) Presentation of the final results of COST Action 324 (Long Term Performance of Road Pavements) and COST Action 325 (New Road Monitoring Equipment and Methods); c) Provision of a forum for discussion between European researchers in the domains of road infrastructure and road safety, in order to utilise potential synergies between the various projects; 4) Presentation of the final results of COST Action 324 (Long Term Performance of Road Pavements) and COST Action 325 (New Road Monitoring Equipment and Methods); and 5) Provision of a forum for discussions between researchers and policy makers in order to provide user input into research planned and underway, and also to enhance the contribution of research results to policy making. The event was divided into a number of areas, and this document brings together the three main elements of the Conference. These being: 1) inputs from the speakers who introduced the key elements in the first plenary session; 2) summaries and recommendations from the rapporteurs in each of the eight technical sessions; and 3) Conclusions and recommendations from the summarising plenary session. The target audience comprised researchers and also users of research in such areas as policy development, standardisation, interest groups and industry. Around forty presentations were given in ten different sessions. (A)
Abstract