Asphalt 4.0 for future mobility" is the overall theme of the next E&E Congress Madrid 2020, an event organized jointly by the European Asphalt Pavement Association (EAPA) and Eurobitume.
The 7th Eurasphalt & Eurobitume Congress will be held on 12-14 May 2020 in Palacio Municipal de Congresos in Madrid (Spain). leStrade (which is the oldest technical magazine in Europe reporting about road infrastructure) and its media platform (included lestradeweb.it and abcmagazine.eu) will be the Italian official media partner of the event.
The main objectives of E&E Congress 2020 are well explained in the Welcome Letter signed by Christophe Jacquet, President of Eurobitume, and John Kruse Larsen, President of EAPA. We are pleased to report it here.
"The future mobility scenarios being developed now will clearly have impacts on our road infrastructure in the future. The traditional ways of travel will change and the use of automated and guided vehicles will have a greater effect on road requirements. The current recognised industrial change 4.0 - or often referred to as `smart’ industry – we are already seeing and experiencing will continue further spread across a much wider scope of impact and influence.
With more than 90% of the existing European road infrastructure being represented by asphalt materials, this means that as an industry we will also need to accommodate to the future mobility solutions either for maintenance or construction. The continued integration of digitalisation into industry practices, the needs to create better connectivity and data exchange platforms, and the general ambition overall to offer sustainable solutions will all play key roles!
Asphalt, bitumen and other related industries need to be ready for these future requirements – undoubtedly asphalt roads and the services they provide will remain of high importance in the future for all types of end users from cyclists, motorcycles, cars, buses and heavy goods vehicles regardless of the way they move forward. The focus however, will be to create smart roads and therefore smart asphalt.
We invite you to contribute to the industry’s future by supporting the next E&E Congress in 2020 through your attendance and contributions by providing written papers. Our aim is to highlight the importance of an efficient European road network and also the importance that research and new developments play in ensuring that the asphalt roads will be ready for all future demands and innovations.
New technologies do not only influence the future, they also have and will have a clear impact on the way we produce materials, pave and compact asphalt in the future.
The main objectives of the E&E Congress 2020 are to:
To achieve these objectives a varied programme will be been created which identifies key issues associated with future mobility and the role asphalt solutions can play here.
The future is already there, and we have no choice except to be prepared".
