DARe shares innovative TPRAF with local authorities

The LCRIG festival is designed to provide a unique platform that brings together industry leaders, local authorities, government, academia, and the supply chain to drive innovation, learning, and collaboration. Dedicated to advancing highways maintenance and transport technology to help shape the future of highways, the event features live demonstrations, training sessions, and workshops.

DARe collaborated with Project Partner, National Highways, to deliver a session in the LCRIG programme focussed on the innovative DARe Transport Performance & Risk Analysis Framework (TPRAF).

The TPRAF provides a novel, integrated, holistic framework for understanding transport system performance, helping transport decision-makers to integrate and balance resilience, sustainability, carbon, and long-term performance in decisions, and move beyond asset-by-asset assessments to whole system understanding.

During the session at the LCRIG event, DARe team members Professor Jennifer Schooling and Dr Alistair Ford shared with participants how the TPRAF can be used and applied to different scenarios, contexts, and locations. Designed to be flexible and modular, the TPRAF comprises the Decision Support Process (DSP), and the Integrated Modelling Platform (IMP), which can both be used independently. Prof Schooling, DARe Co-Director, is the Hub lead on the DSP, and Dr Ford, DARe Co-Investigator, leads the development of the IMP. During the interactive session they each talked through the uses and applications of each element of the TPRAF, and how together they form a holistic framework.

Like all the Hub’s outputs, the DARe TPRAF has been built through deep collaboration, utilising real-world insights from a variety of transport stakeholders including local and combined authorities from across the UK. Their input and feedback have been essential in the shaping of the Hub’s research and outputs.

Since the beginning of this year, the DARe team have been presenting the introduction of the TPRAF to multiple audiences at different events, including the recent DfT Climate Adaptation in Local Transport event. Events like the LCRIG festival provide an important opportunity to engage with more local authorities and stakeholders, offering a chance to explain more details of the Framework and collect crucial feedback and insights into its applicability and usability.

Prof Jennifer Schooling said: “It was a real pleasure to present DARe’s Transport Performance and Risk Analysis Framework (TPRAF) to the audience at LCRIG. The ability to reach such a wide range of participants from local authorities was extremely valuable, as we hope that they will be adopters of the TPRAF. We had great engagement from the audience, with insightful questions and broad support for what we are trying to achieve. Thanks are due to National Highways for inviting us along to present.”

The LCRIG Innovation and Learning Festival took place during one of the recent heatwaves in the UK – apt timing that emphasises the urgent need for tools like the DARe TPRAF, that can help transport decision makers balance and integrate low carbon targets alongside resilience and adaptation. With recent high temperatures above 30°C placing increasing stress on already strained transport infrastructure, stakeholders across the transport sector need support, data, and tools now more than ever. Over the coming months as the Hub enters its final phase, the DARe team will continue to share and develop our key outputs including the TPRAF, with local authorities, government, and other stakeholders across the transport sector.