ESR13: Using truck sensors for road pavement performance investigation

Hello everybody! I hope you spent nice holidays and you came back to work cheerful and full of energy! Today, as promised, I’m going to explain a bit more about the data we collect and about the type of analysis we intend to perform. As I previously explained , the objective of the project is: to assess the relationship between truck fleet fuel consumption and road pavement conditions. Data about the fuel usage are collected by Microlise Ltd whilst data about road pavement conditions are collected by TRL Ltd (but owned by Highways England ). In both cases, data are stored in very big databases which can be remotely queried whenever needed. This study is going to consider only data about trucks travelling along the English SRN (Strategic Road Network). The SRN is completely managed by the Highways England authority. It is around 7’000 kilometers long and is mostly made of motorways and ‘A’ roads. Although the SRN network represents just 2% of the length of all roa...

Hey crew! How are you doing? Are you ready for a new post? Today I will explain you why my project is so important for Europe as well as for the rest of the world. I’ll be honest with you: this time the post will be a bit more boring than usual. So, get yourself a pillow before you start reading. “Forewarned is forearmed.” cit. I will start this post with some questions for you. I hope they will allow you a better understanding of the issues that I’ll be dealing with. Have you ever remained stuck in a traffic jam? For example: while you are coming back from school or from work, or maybe when you were going to watch a football match at the stadium. Probably, you were just cursing the closest driver or all the cars around you because maybe you were missing your train or you were going to arrive late to the meeting you had with your boss. Have you ever cursed the local administration while driving on a rough road? Probably you’re so used to drive in such terr...

Hello, my name is Federico Perrotta (FP13), I’m Italian and I’m 26 years old. I’m a PhD student, Marie S k ł o do wska-Curie fellow, at the University of Nottingham and this is my blog. Here I’ll periodically insert (let’s say once a month) a summary of how’s going on my project and which are our plans for its future development. I’ll insert also news about trainings, meetings and conferences I think I should attend. It would be fun to discuss about what’s going on and any observation, question or suggestion is welcome. My background is Civil Engineering and in particular it is Transportation Engineering. I got my Bachelor in Civil Engineering at the   Università degliStudi di Parma   in Italy and I got my Master - specialized in Transportation Engineering - in Parma as well. How and when I decided to apply for a PhD position and start my research/academic career I cannot say precisely but I think the first time I got interested in research was during my...