ONGOING TASK FORCES
APSE is currently working on four task forces to tackle important topics such as the education of pavement sustainability and resilience, applications of analytical tools in the characterization of pavement materials, best practices for publishing in pavement science and engineering, and spreading awareness in academia about the status of key journals in our field. The description of each task force is found below:
Task Force 1: Pavement Sustainability and Resiliency Essentials for Academics
Chair: Dr. Hasan Ozer, Arizona State University
Goals: The main goal of this task force is to identify gaps related to the education of sustainability and resilience concepts in pavement engineering. These concepts include, but are not limited to quantifying resource consumption, environmental assessment, socio-economic impacts, and material and design factors. Consequently, the task force will explore the best approaches to address the identified gaps and improve the incorporation of resilience and sustainability in the educational experience. These approaches may include new content for existing courses (e.g. term projects, case studies), development of extended syllabi for undergraduate and graduate courses, and/or the development of circulars on the topics of resilience and sustainability. The task force will consider and identify resources (reports, papers, chapters from books, software) that can be used by instructors and students.
Task Force 2: A Short Course for Analytical Tools to Characterize Pavement Materials
Chair: Dr. Shane Underwood, North Carolina State University
Goals: The main goal of this task force is to develop a short course (24 to 32 hrs of instruction) that can be offered for graduate students and researchers in the area of PS&E. The course will cover chemical and microstructural analysis of pavement materials. The short course is expected to cover both experimental methods as well as simulation software. It will also identify the relationships between measured properties and performance of pavement systems.
Task Force 3: Best Practice Guidelines for Publishing in Pavement Science and Engineering
Chair: Dr. Zhen Leng, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Goals: This task force aims to disseminate good practices on the code of conduct for publications in PS&E. The codes available from main publishers in the field will be used as the references and APSE members who are serving as editor-in-chiefs or associate editors of academic journals will be contacted and interviewed or experience and advice sharing. The task force will address various issues including open access versus closed-access (subscription-based) publications, citations, originality, among other issues.
Task Force 4: Communication of Status of PS&E Publications
Chair: Dr. Silvia Caro, University of Los Andes
Goals: The main journals specialized in PS&E are relatively new as most of them started within the past 10-20 years. Some academic institutions and organizations still rank these journals based on outdated metrics or do not account for the significant improvements in the ranks of these journals in various citation databases (e.g. Web of Science, Scopus). This task force will gather information about status of the journals in international databases, and develop a strategy for communicating the findings to academic institutions and organizations. The work of this task force will build on the findings of a previous task force that conducted comprehensive evaluation of PS&E journals.
