Resilient Roads Roundtable Announces Fall 2022 Innovators and Influencers List

Leaders Across Transportation Infrastructure Sector Recognized for Ongoing Impact 

(Atlanta, GA, October 19, 2022):  The Resilient Roads Roundtable has announced its Fall 2022 list of Resilient Roads Innovators and Influencers. The objective of the bi-annual Resilient Roads Innovators and Influencers list is to recognize those whose advocacy for transportation resilience is most clear and effective as well as those who are creating and adopting new materials, methods, and models to advance transportation infrastructure resilience. The program is intended to spur others to undertake similar leadership actions. 

The Resilient Roads Roundtable membership and the group’s Innovators and Influencers list are comprised of leaders from across the transportation infrastructure ecosystem – from transportation agency officials to road materials manufacturers to technology pioneers and top academic researchers. The Fall 2022 Resilient Roads Innovators and Influencers list spotlights those “first among equals” who are paving the way for successful road resilience initiatives.   

• Pete Buttigieg, US Secretary of Transportation. Infrastructure resilience has been a central focus of Buttigieg’s US Department of Transportation leadership and he has been its prime champion. Under Buttigieg, climate and resilience considerations have been explicitly identified in many of the organizations grants, policies and programs.  In July 2022, on the heels of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) Formula Program – making $7.3 billion available to fund projects that make at-risk transportation assets more resilient to future weather events and other natural disasters. “We have to factor in resilience in all of our decisions,” Secretary Buttigieg said recently.  

• Elizabeth Kemp Herrera, Risk & Resilience Program Manager, Colorado Department of Transportation. Colorado established a proactive resiliency initiative following a disastrous storm season in 2013 which shut down 400 roads. Under Lizzie Kemp’s guidance, Colorado’s road resilience work is viewed by its DOT peers as remaining ahead of the curve. Kemp’s team is one of the first to develop a tool to calculate infrastructure risk while assessing the potential benefits of resiliency investments. Beyond that, Kemp is a frequent speaker and writer on resilience matters from participating in industry events like AASHTO’s Transportation Resilience Innovations Summit and Exchange to publishing reports like, “Risk and Resilience Analysis for Highway Assets” for the Transportation Research Board.  
• Jim Pappas, Director of Transportation Resiliency, Delaware Department of Transportation. Delaware is not only a coastal state, but it also has the lowest mean elevation of all the U.S. states.  As a result, a greater proportion of Delaware’s land area is at risk of coastal flooding than any of the lower 48 states except Florida and Louisiana. Jim Pappas has worked with the Delaware Department of Transportation for close to 30 years and his longevity with the organization has not diminished his willingness to innovate.  For example, in areas where roads are regularly under water following storm surges, Pappas has piloted new pavement design approaches. In one case, the agency elevated a road by five inches using porous asphalt atop the existing pavement and flanked by geogrid to create edge drops and enable filtering.  
• Paula Hammond, Senior Vice President, National Transportation Market Leader at WSP USA.  WSP is one of the world’s leading engineering firms.  Paula Hammond leads the company’s work in emerging transportation areas including resilience. Among its resilience-related initiatives, WSP develops and helps to apply frameworks – such as its Adaptation Decision-making Assessment Process (ADAP) which the firm created in partnership with the Federal Highway Administration – that incorporate scenario planning, risk management and resilience throughout the full infrastructure project lifecycle.  WSP worked with the Colorado Resiliency and Recovery Office to create the Colorado Resiliency Framework, which now guides State actions and acts as a model to advance resilience planning in communities across the state.  Hammond is a frequent writer and speaker on transportation issues. Hammond’s influence related to road resilience matters is amplified by her leadership in key industry associations.  She was recently selected as 2022-2023 chair of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, the first woman chair in that group’s history.  
• Seth Schultz, CEO/Executive Director, Resilience Rising. Schultz founded Resilience Rising – a global consortium of NGOs and initiatives which aim to make the world safer through resilient infrastructure. In early October 2022, Resilience Rising announced that it is collaborating with Lloyd’s Register Foundation on a new program that harnesses Lloyd’s World Risk Poll data and insights collected from over 125,000 people in 121 countries to improve the global understanding of risk, resilience, and decision-making. The initiative will develop new insights and applications relevant to resilience across businesses, policymakers, and infrastructure owners, and will also help to shape future iterations of the Poll to unlock insights on perceptions of risk and resilience over time.  
• Renaud de Montaignac, COO & General Manager, ORIS.  In September 2021, Holcim – a global building materials leader – announced the creation of ORIS, the first digital material platform for sustainable road construction, as an independent entity. Renaud de Montaignac helps lead the new entity which has developedthe first digital materials platform for designing more sustainable and resilient roads. ORIS technology enables early analysis of road designs for an optimized result, balancing performance, cost, resilience and environmental impact. De Montaignac and his team have won acclaim for ORIS from organizations like the Solar Impulse Foundation, National Highways, the GI Hub Challenge and the International Road Federation  
• Dr. Benjamin Bowers and Dr. Jeffrey LaMondia, Auburn University, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. As home to The National Center for Asphalt Technology and a world class civil and environmental engineering department, Auburn University is a hub for transportation infrastructure research.  To tackle the challenge of measuring the resilient performance of roads, Auburn engineering professors Ben Bowers and Jeff LaMondia have initiated PREP – Performance-based Resilience Evaluation Program Framework.  PREP is intended to be a flexible, data-driven, performance-based, scalable process for measuring transportation system resilience. Both LaMondia and Bowers are frequent participants and presenters on road resilience and performance at transportation industry association events.  
• Dr. Erol Tutumluer, University of Illinois, The Grainger College of Engineering.  Tutumluer is a renowned expert in Transportation Geotechnics – including how geosynthetic products help to stabilize and stiffen the ground beneath roads to enhance resilience. His ongoing research advances the state of knowledge related to the sustainable and resilient use of foundation geomaterials and construction practices for transportation infrastructure. He has served as an investigator on over 100 research projects and authored/co-authored over 350 peer reviewed publications from his research projects. Dr. Tutumluer is also the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Transportation Geotechnics.  
• Dr. Redmond Clark, President, Asphalt Plus LLC. Research from the US Tire Manufacturers Association, University of Missouri, and The Ray found that Rubber Modified Asphalt is a resilient pavement solution that lasts longer and ruts and cracks less than standard asphalt in a wide range of climactic conditions. rubber modified asphalt, which incorporates ground tire rubber made from scrap tires into asphalt.  Red Clark is the founder of Asphalt Plus – one of the pioneers in expanding the cost-efficient use of recycled tire rubber in asphalt. Clark’s engineered rubber has endured a wide range of harsh climate & road use conditions – on roads throughout the United States.  
• Mikhil Ranka, Director, Zydex Industries.  Water is one of the major threats to road resilience.  Zydex technology enables the building of moisture-resistant, more durable roads. Ranka is business director of Zydex’s road technologies, author of four patents, and creator of various chemical technologies related to improved pavement durability. Zydex technology allows road asphalt mixtures to be used in extreme climatic conditions with an increased design life by treating a pavement’s sub-layers to mitigate repel water and eliminate water-induced pavement damage.   

“We are very grateful for the visionaries in the transportation infrastructure sector who are innovating and advocating new materials, methods, policies, and programs to advance road resilience.  The Resilient Roads Innovators and Influencers list honors those making a big impact,” said Paul Schmitz, Market Manager – Public Roads with Tensar International Corporation and co-founder of the Resilient Roads Roundtable.  

About Resilient Roads Roundtable 

The Resilient Road Roundtable is a gathering of transportation infrastructure leaders and their organizations with a common interest in improving the resiliency and longevity of North American roadways. The mission is to encourage the adoption of Life Cycle Cost Analysis and the setting of performance expectations for road building and maintenance initiatives to build more enduring roads for less cost – both upfront and over the long-term. The Roundtable encourages the use of a range of innovative materials and methods for road longevity and resilience with a one-size-fits-none viewpoint – that is, there are likely to be multiple solutions to the matter. Participants also join forces to educate stakeholders on products, processes and best practices that will save time, money, lives and the environment. See www.resilientroadways.com