PIARC – World Road Association

Description:

The World Road Association is a non-profit organization established in 1909 as the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses (PIARC). The Association’s broad aim over its more than 100-year history has been to promote international cooperation and the exchange of knowledge on issues relating to roads and road transport.  The Association mobilizes its members’ expertise to develop and share knowledge to contribute to sustainable accessibility for people and goods by improving the state of roads and road transport worldwide. It fulfils this mission through operations guided by a 4-year Strategic Plan.

With more than 120 member countries, the World Road Association brings together governments from all over the globe. Its members represent all levels of economic development and every region in the world.

The Strategic Plan for 2020-2023 consists of four strategic themes:

• ST 1 Road Administration
• ST 2 Mobility
• ST 3 Safety and Sustainability
• ST 4 Resilient Infrastructure.

Within these themes there have been 17 Technical Committees and 5 Task Forces established responsible for the implementation of activities of the strategic plan. The role of technical committees is to produce reports on best practices and recommendations in their respective fields thereby assisting decision makers, road engineers and research engineers. They also play an active role in the preparation of the World Road Congresses. The objectives to be achieved and deliverables produced by each technical committee are defined by the terms of reference.

Climate change resilience of road infrastructure is tackled by these technical committees:

• TC 1.4 Climate Change and Resilience of Road Networks (ST 1)
• TC 1.5 Disaster management (ST 1)
• TC 3.4 Environmental Sustainability in Road Infrastructure and Transport (ST 3)
• technical committees of the ST 4 dealing with the resilience of tunnels, bridges, pavements and earthworks

As climate change is expected to have significant impacts on design, maintenance, construction and operation of global road infrastructure, PIARC provides road infrastructure owners and operators with guidance how to adapt their programmes, strategies, policies and standards to anticipated climate changes. The International Climate Change Adaptation Framework for Road Infrastructure (2015) guides road authorities through the process of increasing the resilience of their networks and assets. The framework facilitates the identification and replication of lessons learned from other countries and takes account of the varying levels of preparedness and adaptive capacity and knowledge from country-to-country and region-to region. It is also designed to be applicable at any scale (such as national, regional, local and asset specific).

Apart from this adaptation framework, PIARC has also produced technical reports focusing on climate change resilience of particular road assets, e.g. Dealing with the effects of climate change on road pavements (2012).

Reference information

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