news

The European Commission has presented a progress report covering the first two years of the 7thEU framework programme for R&D (FP7), which will last until 2013. The biggest EU R&D funding programme ever, with a €54bn budget over 7 years.

The partners of the FP6 project ARCHES (“Assessment and Rehabilitation of Central European Highway Structures”)  published their first newsletter. If you would like to know more about proof load testings on bridges in Poland and Slovenia, on corrosion monitoring, prevention and protection, Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concretes,  as well as on the promising technology of concrete columns wrapping with FRP materials, please download the newsletter.

The FEHRL secretariat wishes a warm welcome to its new Office Assistant: Sylvia Derveaux.  Ms Derveaux, who joined the FEHRL Office end of April 2009 has a Bachelor in Business Administration from UBI (United Business Institute) and speaks French, English, German fluently with good skills in Spanish. She also has a two year experience in Office Management. Ms Derveaux will mainly be in charge of administrative tasks, but will also maintain the FEHRL website and the FEHRLopedia.

On May 7 and 8, FEHRL will participate in the "Research Connection 2009" event that will be organised under the Czech EU Presidency by the European Commission/DG Research. For more information on registration etc. please turn to the EC website. The programme of the conference and workshops is available here. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

According to the European Parliament’s  Industry Committee,  Tyre buyers will be better informed about their fuel-efficiency, safety and noise performance thanks to a mandatory tyre label proposal they voted through on Tuesday.  Like the European energy label, the tyre label will use fuel-efficiency classes ranging from best-performance (green “A” class) to worst (red “G” class). It will also show the tyre's wet grip and noise performance.

Bringing together representatives from the road related industry, road decision makers, owners, and operators - both for urban and interurban area, research institutes, academia and the European Commission, the HEAVYROUTE project will present its final results at the HEAVYROUTE FINAL SEMINAR (invitation). 
 

 Under the title ‘Road Owners Adapting to Climate Change’,  highway authorities and researchers meet for two days in Oslo to examine the key challenges.  The event was organised bythe Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA)  on 31^st March and 1^st April.  Following presentations from numerous countries about the problems they face and the measures being taken,  researchers from four ERA-NET ROAD sponsored projects gave an overview of their activities on the topic.

CERTAIN project will organise the Slovenian National seminar in Bled, on May 6 and 7, 2009. The main focus of the event, which will be held in the Slovenian language, with guest speakers from Croatia and Serbia, will be on presentation of results of the SPENS and ARCHES projects. The second day will focus on dissemination of results of other recent FEHRL initiated European research projects. Here you can register, see the programme, download the seminar brochure, book the hotel, or download the letter of guarantee, in case that you need a visa to enter Slovenia.

Under the title "Tomorrow's transport, today's innovation: mapping EU transport research", DG RTD Transport included the INTRO, NR2C and INQUEST projects in an animation on their website.