COLLABORATION ON HIGHWAY R&D TO ADDRESS NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Research programs have historically been a building block for combining experience and innovative ideas to produce new technologies. To ensure that the technologies will actually meet user needs, many research administrators are promoting cooperative research efforts. The move toward collaboration is increasingly evident among members of the highway community. Presented here are a brief historical account of highway research administration and a description of two efforts aimed at developing and distributing new highway technologies through collaborations of government, industry, academia, and other entities. One of these cooperative efforts is the Highway Innovative Technology Evaluation Center (HITEC), created in 1992 through a 4-year cooperative agreement between the Civil Engineering Research Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration. The other is the United Kingdom's Technology Foresight Programme, which provides a framework for coordinating long-term research priorities and is envisioned as a means for forging a new working partnership of scientists, engineers, economists, financiers, businessmen, industrialists, and civil servants to assess the significance of emerging technological trends and market opportunities.