Asphalt Institute Foundation Strategic Asphalt Research (STAR) Symposium

Strategic Asphalt Research (STAR) Symposium

Representatives from both Eurobitume and individual member companies were amongst the approximately 100 invited attendees at the recent Strategic Asphalt Research Symposium (STAR) in Colorado Springs, USA. Included were professionals from the bitumen industry and a wide range of stakeholder organisations - such as users, hauliers, testing laboratories, regulators, policy makers and academics.

Organised by the Asphalt Institute Foundation (AiF), the STAR Symposium set out to identify issues and potential areas of future strategic research that would help our industry meet and adapt to the challenges and opportunities in the next 10-20 years – an objective which aligned very well with the ‘Preparing the Asphalt industry for the Future’ theme of next year’s E&E Event 2018 in Berlin, on 14-15 June.

On the opening day guest speaker Michael Rogers, a practical futurist, assisted everyone in thinking about the long-term future by describing many real-life examples and his opinions on future trends.

There were then four workshop sessions, each of which addressed one of the broad areas below and generated a prioritised list of ideas to be reviewed and considered:

  1. Economics
  2. Performance
  3. Sustainability
  4. Workers

A document summarising the output from the symposium will be produced by the Strategic Research Committee of AiF, and a report is expected to be made available before the end of the year.

Eurobitume President Siobhan Mckelvey commented: 

“This was an excellent initiative and a very valuable event, focussed upon identifying the future issues where strategic research by our industry will enable us to remain best placed to encourage the continued safe and effective use of bitumen. We look forward to progressing these ideas moving forward, and to addressing the ‘Preparing the asphalt industry for the future’ theme at the E&E Event 2018 in Berlin next year”.