The £30 million ADEPT Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads programme is celebrating its first year with a live Expo in Birmingham on 17th April.
Designed to tackle decarbonisation across local highways, the three-year, UK-wide programme funded by the Department for Transport has been developed by the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT).
Aimed at local highways authorities and the wider highways, transport and environment sectors, Live Labs 2 Expo 24 will showcase innovative solutions developed to support the decarbonisation of local highways infrastructure and assets.
Expo is an opportunity to meet the project teams and their partners drawn from across the public and private sector, academia and SMEs. The event will include speakers, exhibitors and insights into the development of each project so far.
As with Live Labs 1, the focus is on scalability, applicability and the effective use of resources, but equally invaluable is the emphasis on sharing knowledge. Understanding what hasn’t worked and why is as important to the programme as the successful implementation.
Live Labs 2 consists of seven projects are working to four inter-connected themes across the UK:
- A UK centre of excellence for materials – North Lanarkshire Council and Transport for West Midlands.
- Corridor and place-based decarbonisation – Wessex partnership (Somerset County Council, Cornwall Council and Hampshire County Council), Devon County Council, and Liverpool City Council.
- A green carbon laboratory – South Gloucestershire Council & West Sussex County Council.
- A future lighting testbed – East Riding of Yorkshire Council.
Anthony Payne, President of ADEPT said: “ADEPT’s Live Labs programmes are designed to be open source – sharing knowledge, learning and insight with local highways authorities, the wider sector and beyond.
“Live Labs 2’ focus on decarbonisation goes beyond the usual focus on electric vehicles and active travel, to address the much harder, but critical areas of highways infrastructure, construction, assets and maintenance from design to end of life.
“Live Labs 2 Expo 24 is an important opportunity to learn about the development of each project so far and discover the innovations and materials we need to deploy.”
ADEPT represents local authority, county, unitary and metropolitan directors of place. The Live Labs initiatives are part of ADEPT’s SMART Places programme to support the use of innovation and technology in place-based services.
To register interest in Live Labs 2 Expo 2024, please visit: www.adeptlivelabs.org.uk/conference
