We were thrilled to host the Annual Review 2024 at the Cambridge Union in the heart of Cambridge on Wednesday, 13 November, bringing together over 100 academics, industry representatives, and researchers to showcase our progress and engage in meaningful discussions about the future of digital road infrastructure.
The Annual Review 2024 began with inspiring opening remarks from Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation at University of Cambridge, and Professor Ioannis Brilakis, Academic Lead of the DRF Initiative and Laing O'Rourke Professor of Civil and Information Engineering, University of Cambridge.
Key achievements and future plans were shared by Prof Ioannis Brilakis, Dr Lavindra de Silva, DRF Technical Director and Dr Nevena Vajdic, Future Roads Senior Project Manager, spotlighting advances in EPSRC Digital Roads Prosperity Partnership and EU SCA HM2020 FUTUREROADS Fellowship Programme.
Research leaders then led engaging sessions on research themes: Digital Twins, Data Science, Smart Materials, Automation & Robotics, and Sustainability reflecting on the research covered in the accompanying Book of Abstracts. The Book of Abstracts is a compilation of work currently underway within these themes.
During the lunch, the attendees were invited to delve deeper into the research at a poster and networking session with our gathered researchers. Posters were designed by the MSCA Future Roads Fellows, The Digital Roads Research team alongside researchers and projects that make up the wider research eco-system here at the Civil Engineering division of the Department of Engineering at University of Cambridge.
Please see the table at the bottom of the page for links to all the posters.
In the afternoon the attendees broke into groups with industry representatives discussing industry challenges under the themes: Digital Twins, Data Science, Smart Materials, Automation & Robotics, and Sustainability.
A heartfelt thank you to all who attended, presented, and participated in discussions.
The day was concluded with lively discussion at the Digital Roads of the Future Debate, which you can watch here: Digital Roads Of the Future Debate 2024 | Digital Roads of the Future
Future Roads Research Posters 2024
| Name of Researcher/ Project | Title of Poster |
| Arsen Abdulali - Human-Robot Cooperation for Maintenance and Construction of Future Roads | Human-Robot Cooperation for Maintenance and Construction of Future Roads |
| Kai-Fung Chu - Control and implications of mixed autonomous vehicle-infrastructure in a heterogeneous multi-agent system framework | Control of mixed autonomous vehicle-infrastructure in a heterogeneous multi-agent system framework |
| Judith Fauth - Advanced Planning and Building Permits through Road Digital Twins | Advanced Planning and Building Permits through Road Digital Twins |
| Khashayar Kazemzadeh - Enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in active mobility: a study on underrepresented groups' perspectives in road infrastructure planning in Cambridge | Assessing Cycling Experience Using Digital Twin Video Scenarios |
| Jie Liu - Measuring and enhancing the resilience of urban transport infrastructure networks to climate change | The rainstorm vulnerability of Road networks |
| Linjun Lu - Development of a vision-based method for high-quality traffic data collection in support of building trustworthy digital twins of road network | GNN-based Data Imputation In Support of Trustworthy Road Digital Twins |
| Shirin Malihi - Maintenance of Road Digital Twin Using Multi-modal data | A Quality-aware Road Digital Twin Using Multi-modal Data |
| Yuandong Pan - Data fusion and data structure design in creating and updating digital twins | Construct and maintain a highway digital twin from multi-modal data |
| Varun Kumar Reja - Towards the development of a resilient highway digital twin: Requirements, Specifications and Standards | Establishing DT Information Requirements for Road Maintenance |
| Abbas Solouki - Zero waste geopolymer pavement | Low Carbon Waste-Based Geopolymer Pavements |
| Zhaojie Sun - Digital twin-driven structural health monitoring of roads by using physics-based model and machine learning | Digital Twin-Driven Structural Health Monitoring of Roads |
| Chapa Sirithunge - A multi-agent system for heavy machinery operation through context aware sensor fusion | A Multi-Agent System for heavy machine operation through context aware sensor fusion |
| Jinying Xu - Data science and digital technologies for intelligent carbon management in the whole life of highway assets | Advancing Carbon Data Collection Maturity |
| Zizhen Xu - Assessing road infrastructure resilience against extreme weather events and fostering climate change adaptation | Climate Resilience of Highway Network |
| Xiang Wang - Explainable artificial intelligence assistant low-cost autonomous-vehicle-mounted inertial measurement unit sensors based road surface condition monitoring system | AI-assisted sensor-based road surface condition monitoring system |
| Ze Zhou Wang - An innovative zonation-based machine-learning methodology for studying the interactive impacts of traffic, microclimate and natural hazards on pavement deterioration | Bayesian Back Analysis of Pavement Properties using Traffic Speed Deflectometer Measurement |
| Mengtian Yin - Exploring the minimum viable product (MVP) of a digital twin for road inspection and maintenance | Exploring the minimum viable product (MVP) of a digital twin for road inspection and maintenance |
| Yue Xie - Highway intelligent traffic control system based on vehicle-road coordination and multi-agent technology | Highway intelligent traffic Management system |
| Junxiang Zhu - A graph-based approach for designing road digital twins | A Graph-centric Framework for Digital Twinning |
Digital Roads Research Posters 2024
| Name of Researcher/ Project | Title of Poster |
| Digital Roads Overview Poster 2024 | Digital Roads Overview Poster 2024 |
| Digital Roads - Digital Theme 2024 | Digital Roads - Digital Theme 2024 |
| Digital Roads - Physical Theme 2024 | Digital Roads - Physical Theme 2024 |
| Digital Roads - Delivering Impact Theme 2024 | Digital Roads - Delivering Impact Theme 2024 |