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Special Issue "Sustainable and Digital Transformation of Road Infrastructures"

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Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minho, Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
Interests: asphalt materials; bitumen modification; ecomaterials; waste incorporation; recycling; warm mix asphalt; advanced characterization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Joel R. M. Oliveira

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Guest Editor

Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minho, Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
Interests: life-cycle assessment; maintenance and rehabilitation of road pavements; sustainability; pavement preservation; pavement recycling; warm mix asphalts; grouted macadams
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Traditional construction processes and materials used for road infrastructure no longer respond to the needs of a constantly changing society. Therefore, a sustainable and digital transformation of road pavements is essential to deal with limited available resources and the need for more efficient construction processes integrating sustainable and intelligent materials.

Road infrastructures are essential to how our society lives in a global market, and their sustainability is essential to ensure adequate living conditions for future generations. All current efforts to promote sustainability are crucial to meet most UN sustainable development goals.

The digital transformation of road infrastructures is also imperative to meet the challenges of competitiveness and productivity at the international level. Several digital tools have recently been developed to deal with the high amounts of data available and to support road construction and life cycle analyses. These tools will facilitate the introduction of the digital twin and building information modeling (BIM) concepts in road infrastructures, using research in cutting-edge digital areas such as augmented reality, sensing and monitoring, AI, machine learning, big data, and IoT, among others.

The present Special Issue aims to gather a series of manuscripts related to sustainable road infrastructures and their digital transformation. We invite submissions on recycled, bio-derived, and alternative sustainable materials; low energy-consuming technologies; and the life-cycle assessment of road paving technologies and materials. The road infrastructure of the future should be prepared for the demands of climate change and sustainability challenges. New digital technologies and intelligent materials are essential to achieve that objective, as they sense and monitor the road to obtain real-time data and improve asset management. Therefore, manuscripts focusing on digital twins, BIM, augmented reality, sensing and monitoring, AI, machine learning, big data, IoT, or the social aspects of their use in transport infrastructure are welcome. Additionally, papers concerned with the policies and implementation of sustainable and digital practices would be appreciated.

Dr. Hugo Silva
Dr. Joel R. M. Oliveira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Infrastructures is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

sustainability
recycling
waste incorporation
warm mix asphalts
bio-binders
life-cycle assessment
circular economy
energy-efficient technologies
road monitoring
sensors
building information modeling
digital twins
artificial intelligence
machine learning
Internet of things
big data

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Research

18 pages, 3241 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Big Data System Architecture to Support the Monitoring of Paved Roads

and

Infrastructures 2023, 8(12), 167; https://doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures8120167 - 24 Nov 2023

Viewed by 399

Abstract

Today, everything is connected, including the exchange of data and the generation of new information. As a result, large amounts of data are being collected at an ever-increasing rate and in a variety of forms, a phenomenon now known as Big Data. Recent developments in information and communication technologies are driving the generation of significant amounts of data from multiple sources, namely sensors. In response to these technological advances and data challenges, this paper proposes a Big Data system architecture for paved road monitoring and implements part of this architecture on a section of road in Portugal as a case study. The challenge in the case study architecture is to collect and process sensor data in real time, at a rate of 500 records per second, producing 15 GBytes of data per day, using a real-time data stream for real-time monitoring and a batch data stream for deeper analysis. This allows users to obtain instant updates on road conditions such as the number of vehicles, loads, weather, and pavement temperatures on the road. They can monitor what is happening on the road in real time, receive alerts, and even gain insight into historical data, such as analysing the condition of structures or identifying traffic patterns. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable and Digital Transformation of Road Infrastructures)

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23 pages, 11968 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Installation and Use of a Pavement Monitoring System Based on Fibre Bragg Grating Optical Sensors

Francisco J. P. Rebelo

and

Infrastructures 2023, 8(10), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures8100149 - 13 Oct 2023

Viewed by 952

Abstract

The evolution of technological tools, namely affordable sensors for data collection, and the growing concerns about maintaining roads in adequate conditions have promoted the development of continuous pavement monitoring systems. This paper presents the installation and use of an innovative pavement monitoring system, which was developed to measure the effects of vehicle loads and temperature on the performance of a pavement structure. The sensors used are based on fibre Bragg grating optical technology, collecting data about the strains imposed in the pavement and the temperature at which those measurements are made. The site selection for the system’s installation and the essential installation details to ensure successful data collection are addressed. A calibration procedure was implemented by performing falling weight deflectometer tests and passing preweighed heavy vehicles over the sensors. In addition to validating the system installation, the results obtained in the calibration confirmed the importance of adequately choosing the distance between sensors. Differences of 50 mm in the position of the load may cause differences of about 20% to 25% in the resulting strains. These results confirmed the importance of increasing the sensor concentration in wheel paths. Furthermore, for loads between 25 kN and 65 kN, raising the temperature by 8 °C caused an increase of about 20% in the horizontal tensile strains measured in the pavement. In summary, it was possible to conclude that this innovative system is capable of capturing the effects of temperature and vehicle speed on the response of the pavement, which may be considered an advantage of this type of monitoring system when compared to those that are only used to determine the loads applied to the pavement or to characterise the type of vehicle. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable and Digital Transformation of Road Infrastructures)

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