News

A short notice entitled “DIRECT-MAT Vägmaterial – rivning och återvinning” is published in the SGI newsletter “Geoteknik & Miljö i fokus” no 34 2009. This digital newsletter is distributed to about 1500 professionals in the geotechnical field.

The final seminar of the EC FP6 funded project HeavyRoute was held on 9–10 June in Brussels (Belgium) and FEHRL promoted the DIRECT-MAT project with poster and leaflets. There is a link to the seminar information here.

On the 5^th of June, the DIRECT-MAT project participated in a workshop at the WASCON 2009 conference in Lyon (France). The workshop dealt with “Industrial feedback of practical use of waste in civil engineering – critical issues”. WASCON is held once every three years and is the reference international conference on the issue of integration of secondary raw materials in the field of civil engineering. You can download information on the conference here and Mr Yannick Descantes’ presentation here. An introductory article is included in the proceedings and leaflets were distributed to participants who were also invited to fill in the stakeholders’ questionnaire. 

The XV Int seminar on recycling “FIR Interforum” took place on 20–22 May in Zaragossa (Spain) and Peter Broere, BRBS, gave short information on the DIRECT-MAT project within his main presentation. You will find a link to the seminar website here.

The Interforum is a biannual conference on International Construction & Demolition Waste Recycling organised by FIR (the International Federation of Recycling) and forms a meeting place for industry, authorities and science. There is a link to the FIR homepage here.

The international conference “Urban mobility in the light of the Lisbon Strategy” was held on 13 May in Brno (Czech Republic) and FEHRL promoted the DIRECT-MAT project with poster and leaflets. The FEHRL booth was also visited by commissioner Potocnik and the Czech minister of transport. The conference was arranged by CDV in cooperation with the Czech Ministry of Transport and formed the central event of the European Transport Research and Innovation Week. There is a link to the conference website here.

A short questionnaire has been developed to find out potential end users’ opinions and expectations on the future database. It is composed of ten questions in English and can be found here. The plan is to have it translated into other languages. It can be copied and enclosed in e-mails by project partners in their communications with national stakeholders.

The nomination of candidates for DIRECT-MAT’s reference groups has started. There will be national reference groups in each participating country and an international project reference group (RG). The RG members will be invited to review the project deliverables at an early stage and provide their expectations on the final products. Reference group members will also help in the collection of national site data.

A Czech version of the introductory article entitled “Recyklace a využití R-materiálů v oblasti pozemních komunikací“ is published in the journal “Silniční obzor”, No April/2009. It is the journal of the Czech Road Society and you will find the article on pages 95–97.

The first deliverable (D1 Printed project info) is fulfilled and submitted to the European Commission! It comprises an introductory article in English, a leaflet and a poster describing the project. They can all be found in the project website documents folder here.

From now on there is a short presentation of the DIRECT-MAT project at the SGI website here and also a link to the project website.