Chair: Tiffany Julien, Transportation Specialist, USDOT- Federal Highway Administration and PIARC TC 2.3 English-speaking Secretary
Co-chair: Hinko van Geelen, Senior Researcher, Belgium Road Research Centre

This session will focus on providing knowledge on efficient and safe road freight transport under challenging weather and road conditions and natural events.
With climate change, we are increasingly facing more extreme weather conditions. Adverse weather is one of the major causes of delay on the roadway system. Although many initiatives are being proposed to temper climate change, there is no immediate miracle solution. The entire transportation community, including freight transport, must find ways to cope with this challenge and mitigate effects.
Weather-related delays and natural disasters can add significantly to shipping costs, resulting in negative impacts on the overall economy. Specifically, different cases need to be considered: end products may arrive to customers late, or parts may arrive at the factory later, potentially interfering with the production process. Building a robust roadway system is key to minimizing the negative impact on the economy,
An important focus of this foresight session is to better understand what strategies and solutions are being developed and deployed around the world to mitigate adverse weather-related and natural disasters delays to commercial motor vehicles.
Topics that will be highlighted are impacts on supply chains by interruptions of road freight flows, redundancy in the road network for freight, and approaches to handling extreme weather and road conditions utilizing truck management information systems and ITS. The goal of this session is to identify and share initiatives that are transferrable and/or can be adapted to meet the needs and conditions in any country in any type of severe events.