URBAN PAVEMENTS

Urban areas have become a jigsaw of living spaces delineated by roads, special lanes, bike lanes, footpaths, squares and the numerous walkable surfaces that permit people’s daily mobility. Urban pavements cover about 40% of urban areas and are the largest and most expensive public property on which people travel every day and they must accommodate all users in the most efficient, safe and enjoyable possible way in modern Smart cities

In a 2020 society that will aspire to more liveable cities , a novel approach on how urban pavements are perceived, designed, built, maintained and managed is urgently needed. Safety, sustainability, resilience, accessibility, smart features and aesthetics are the key characteristics that Europe should invest in, forming the new generation of European professionals that will be able to face the issues related with the aspiration of people for a better, more liveable, urban environment.

THE PROJECT

In this context, the participants of SAFERUP! agreed to foster the creation of a cooperative academy-industry Training-through-Research programme that aims to drive the development and adoption of more Sustainable, Accessible, Safe, Resilient, and Smart Urban Pavements. SAFERUP! aims to create a multidisciplinary European Training Network that brings together internationally known researchers and highly qualified industrial and social partners under 6 main pillar-topics

The specific fields of interest are: users’ behaviour and protection (especially the disabled and elderly), intelligibility and accessibility of pavements, road safety and urban acoustics, pavement management systems, durable and smart paving materials (fast-repairing and self-sensing), energy harvesting and geothermal pavements, Urban Heat Island and flood risk mitigation, bioremediation of wash-off waters, pavement and industrial waste recycling and Life Cycle Assessment of construction products and technologies.

MAIN OBJECTIVE

SAFERUP! aims to provide the European community with innovative solutions that will form the urban paved environment of the future. Footpaths, bike lanes, roads, intersections, squares and all other walkable surfaces that we all use every day will be designed, constructed and managed to meet context-sensitive criteria including not only safety, mobility and costs (construction and maintenance), but also sustainability, environmental impacts, accessibility, aesthetics, circular economy and local economy preservation.

The ultimate objective of SAFERUP! is to train new professionals able to provide future generations with more liveable cities by applying solutions developed through cutting-edge research.