35397 - Context-Sensitive Design in Transportation Infrastructures

Learning outcomes

The terms Context Sensitive Design and Context Sensitive Solutions refer to an approach or process as much as they do an outcome. What is unique and "groundbreaking" is that CSD/CSS recognizes that infastructural projects are not just the responsibility or concern of engineers and constructors, or for that matter only the responsibility of the transportation agency. Instead, CSD/CSS calls for the interdisciplinary collaboration of technical professionals, local community interest groups, landowners, facility users, the general public, and essentially any and all stakeholders who will live and work near or use the infrastructure. It is through this process and team approach that the owning agency gains an understanding and appreciation of community values and strives to incorporate or address these in the evolution of the project.

The student attending this course will be facing the major externalities produced by the transportation infrastructures and understand how these negative aspects could be mitigated through the adoption of Context Sensitive Solutions. Basically the studied aspects will focus on landscape, territorial fragmentation, noise emissions, run-off water pollution and GHG emissions. The course will deal with all the mentioned instances and apply the engineering recognized techniques for the qualification and quantification of the detrimental effects produced by the externality. By means of specific examples and a work group project students will be asked to render the principal solutions described during the lectures. In particular, landscaping techniques, defragmentation faunal passageways, noise barriers, wash-off water management systems will be applied to a case history road design project. Other aspects such as road noise emissions, air pollution descriptors and mitigation techniques and airport externalities management will be illustrated with the help of external experts.

Course contents

Context Sensitive Design and Context Sensitive Solutions

European Landscape Convention. Road for and through the Landscape.

Landscaping. Soil-bio engineering techniques. Mitigation and green retaining structures. Shielding.

Territorial Fragmentation. Fragmentation indexes. Faunal movements. Defragmentation techniques. Faunal passageways. Ducts and Ecoducts.

Sound and Noise. Decibels. Measuring noise. Noise pollution standards. Protection from noise.Low noise pavements. Porous asphalts.Dimensioning acoustic barriers. Non acoustic aspects of barriers.

Wash off stormwaters. Road first flush water collection. Water treatment. First flush harvesting and treatment. Best Management Practices. Green solutions: lamination, filtration, infiltration and ponds.

Air pollutants. Effects on humans. Mitigation techniques. Microsimulations and Copert. Roundabouts for safety and gas reduction. Anti-smog pavements.

Airport externalities: noise, gas, water and risk.

Teaching methods

Lectures will be given with ppt slides and projected documents.

Work group project will be carried out in the classroom. CAD software and internet connection are needed.

The project will be completed and printed before the oral examination

Assessment methods

Oral examination.

Lectures themes and project individual evaluation

Teaching tools

Students can download the lacture notes from the AMS Campus webpage.

These are colorppt slides with specific notes and comments.

Office hours

See the website of Cesare Sangiorgi