Overview
Over 90% of the total road network has an asphalt surface and the product is 100% recyclable. There are over 4,000 production sites in Europe and over 10,000 companies are involved in production and/or laying of the asphalt. 90% of the companies can be classified as Small and Medium sized Enterprises.
Today’s asphalt road construction relies to a great deal on the experience of the construction worker, to optimally manage the truck fleets, to operate the paver, and to steer the compactor. Any sub-optimal operation within this chain may lead to a reduction in road quality, what results in reconstruction or decreased life time – both cost-intensive.
Constant monitoring and control of parameters is significant for the quality and durability of the road. The decisive factor is to explore the process chain and with the intensive use of positioning data, evaluate the possibilities of improving each sub-process responsible for the road quality.
ASPHALT offers high precision applications in road construction and fleet management and logistics in the construction just-in-time process chain.
Thus, the ASPHALT applications are considered of strategic importance and are expected to be early adopters of both EGNOS and Galileo in an important professional high value market where European Union and Member States are spending billions of Euros every year.
Thus, ASPHALT addresses both call topics in particular fleet management and logistics applications and high precision applications in road construction.
By the removal or reduction of these quality influencing issues the lifespan of the road buildings should be significant increased. Especially the cost reduction of the road maintenance measurements should be a secondary effect in this project next to the products exploitation goals.
With the introduction of the ASPHALT applications adoption of EGNOS/EDAS and EU GNSS industry competitiveness will be stimulated and markets for Galileo introduction will be prepared.