Laura Moretti

Sapienza University of Rome | la sapienza · Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering DICEA

This two-part manuscript presents a comprehensive methodology for the irregularity assessment of urban stone pavements. The proper road surface assessment using key performance indicators is necessary to plan appropriate maintenance strategies. However, there are no monitoring methods or evaluation criteria for stone pavements whose surfaces are mo...

Environmental safeguards promote innovative construction technologies for sustainable pavements. On these premises, this study investigated four hot mix asphalt (HMA) mixtures—i.e., A, B, C, and D—for the railway sub-ballast layer with 0%, 10%, 20%, and 30% reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) by total aggregate mass and a rejuvenator additive, varying...

Stone pavements are the historical, architectural, and cultural heritage of lots of cities in Italy and the world. Road managers should be able to make decisions on the global conditions to define the most suitable strategies and maintenance interventions for every type of pavement. There are no standard monitoring methods or criteria for evaluatin...

Road asphalt pavements cover a high percentage of urban size and contribute to heat islands. This study proposed a new method to cool asphalt pavement by incorporating a kind of hybrid mineral filler (HMF) with high emissivity into a reference asphalt mixture prepared with limestone mineral filler (LMF). The physical, emissive, solar reflective, an...

The ongoing climate change is manifesting itself through the increasing expansion of Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects. This paper evaluates the microclimate benefits due to cool road pavements, greenery, and photovoltaic canopies in a parking lot in Fondi (Italy), identifying the best strategy to counteract the negative effects of UHIs. The ENVI-met...

Ongoing climate change is manifesting in the expansion of the urban heat island (UHI) effect. This paper evaluates the microclimate benefits of cool pavements and green infrastructures in a historical square in Rome, Italy. The ENVI-Met software enabled us to conduct a microclimatic analysis of the examined square in July 2021, through a comparison...

Background The rapid outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed several challenges to the scientific community. The goal of this paper is to investigate the spread of COVID-19 in Northern Italy during the so-called first wave scenario and to provide a qualitative comparison with the local highway net. Methods Fixed a grid of days fr...

The increasing attention of opinion towards climate change has prompted public authorities to provide plans for the containment of emissions to reduce the environmental impact of human activities. The transport sector is one of the main ones responsible for greenhouse emissions and is under investigation to counter its burdens. Therefore, it is ess...

At the international level, increasing efforts have been made to assess the burdens of transport by road and adopt effective mitigation strategies. In this study, life cycle analyses have been carried out to compare the environmental performances of 100 m-long highway sections during 60 year-service life. According to the standard EN 15804, emissio...

Urban heat islands (UHI) are one of the unequivocal effects of the ongoing process of climate change: anthropized areas suffer extreme heat events that affect the human perception of comfort. This study investigated the effects of road pavements as a passive countermeasure by comparing the air temperature (AT) and the predicted mean vote (PMV) for...

Congestion and safety at road intersections is a main traffic challenge involving several technicians. This paper focuses on spillback of a three-level intersection in Italy, where five roadways merge. More than 130 conflict points affect the existing roundabout where more than 13,000 vehicles move in the peak hour. In order to improve both capacit...

Cool pavements are reflective and/or permeable pavements that improve microclimate of urban areas where heat islands cause discomfort to citizens. Stone pavements lower surface temperatures and reduce the amount of heat absorbed. This study assessed, using ENVI-met 4.3 LITE software, how air temperature and predicted mean vote depend on physical pr...

The Cement Grouted Bituminous Mix (CGBM) is an innovative material that could be used to build airport pavements subjected to heavy concentrated loads or fuel and solvent leaks. CGBM is composed of a porous asphalt clogged with an expansive cement mixture, which fills the asphalt voids. This paper focuses on two airport pavements (i.e., a taxiway a...

The world is facing new challenges due to the SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2) virus outbreak identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The aim of this paper is to investigate and discuss how cities are being managed in the anti-pandemic “new normal”. And this in light of unexpected phenomena such as: the on-going mod...

Airport pavements should ensure regular and safe movements during their service life; the management body has to monitor the functional and structural characteristics, and schedule maintenance work, balancing the often conflicting goals of safety, economic and technical issues. This paper presents a remote monitoring system to evaluate the structur...

Natural disasters happen without warning; it is normally impossible to predict when they will occur, but it is necessary that rescue services reach the disaster site and manage the emergency. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to summarize seismic effects on road, building, and land factors in urban areas. The existing road network is mo...

In the last century the territory and the layout of the cities have undergone important changes with an enlargement in the space of human settlements. It deserves attention in terms of the principles of sustainability, limitation of soil consumption, environmental impacts and social needs. Then, a holistic vision for the definition of city and its...

Maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) scheduling for airport pavement is supported by the scientific literature, while a specific tool for heliport pavements lacks. A heliport pavement management system (HPMS) allows the infrastructure manager to obtain benefits in technical and economic terms, as well as safety and efficiency, during the analyzed p...

Although the design of jointed plain concrete pavements could be solved by commercial software, there is still a need for simple tools to be used in feasibility studies and preliminary cost–benefit analyses. This paper analyzed and verified jointed plain concrete pavements for airports composed of square slabs without tie and dowel bars. The examin...

In recent years, nanotechnology has sparked an interest in nanomodification of bituminous materials to increase the viscosity of asphalt binders and improves the rutting and fatigue resistance of asphalt mixtures. This paper presents the experimental results of laboratory tests on bituminous mixtures laid on a 1052 m-long test section built in Rome...

Air traffic controllers aim to optimize airport capacity, that is to increase the number of aircraft movements per hour maintaining a limited delay. There are several definitions of capacity, which depend on the considered airport element. This study focused on the development of a method that allows evaluating the impact of tower air traffic contr...

Cycling for transportation is an important resource to reduce urban traffic congestion, enhance personal health, reduce energy consumption, and improve air quality, and the safety of cyclists in the cities is becoming a topic of growing interest. As shown in the literature, an important number of cyclist fatalities is due to road crashes occurring...

At the international level, the interest in airport capacity is growing in the last years because its maximization ensures the best performances of the infrastructure. However, infrastructure, procedure, human factor constraints should be considered to ensure a safe and regular flow to the flights. This paper analyzed the airport capacity of an air...

The attention to environmental impacts of cement production has grown fast in recent decades. The cement industry is a significant greenhouse gases emitter mainly due to the calcinations of raw materials and the combustions of fuels. This paper investigates on the environmental performances of cement production and on the identification of factors...

Runway excursions are the main risk for runway safety: operational protection areas mitigate the effects of events classified as veer-off, overrun, and undershoot. This paper presents a methodology for the quantitative risk assessment of runway veer-off in an international airport whose name will not be revealed for privacy reasons. The proposed me...

Capacity is the attitude of an airport to manage a number of operations in a given time interval within a fixed maximum delay (and under given safety conditions). Capacity studies are commonly carried out on five levels of analysis according to the required detail in order to identify the best option that balances economic, logistic and safety issu...

The airport terminal is a complex building composed of many functional subsystems dimensioned to host passenger traffic, considering an appropriate level of service (LoS). The most widely known method to assess the LoS and design the terminal areas is the Airport Development Reference Manual by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Ba...

This article presents a comparative review of the most commonly used nano-additives for bituminous mixtures: nanoclays (NC), nanosilicates, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), nano-calcium oxide (CaO), and nano-titanium dioxide (TiO2). In this study, the mechanical behavior of the obtained additive mixture is evaluated. Accordin...

In the road construction sector, soil treatment is a method for increasing the strength and durability of fine soils that would otherwise be waste: the treatment with lime allows building embankments with clayey soils. However, in-situ and laboratory tests should be carried out to verify the correct addiction of lime during earthworks. This study d...

Home-to-school routes are very sensitive areas: they represent, for children, a learning tool for their everyday activities, but if poorly designed, maintained and equipped they can expose them to traffic risks. Sidewalks’ inappropriate level of service and poor maintenance, especially, are main factors contributing to walking unsuitability, thus t...

The safety of at grade road intersections is a relevant issue with social, economic, and environmental implications. It is related to the behavior of a driver approaching an intersection that, in its turn, is affected by kinematic and physiological variables. This study proposes a model to calculate the intersection operation time (IOT) for typical...

The aim of this paper is to present the results of X-ray diffraction (XRD) tests and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) analyses on a natural and lime-treated clay, in order to determine the percentage of lime able to stabilize soil. For this reason, XRD test analyses have been conducted on natural soil (TQ0...

Irregularity of maintenance operations to restore evenness conditions after damages from shocks, weather phenomena or due to the installation of equipment, and substandard execution of the sidewalks are all factors contributing to walking unsuitability, thus to poor comfort and safety levels for pedestrians. All of the above can be solved by approp...

This paper compared two approaches used to analyze a modular pedestrian pavement made of hexagonal basalt pavers. In presence of occasional heavy traffic roads, the pavement should be verified using methods currently used for road pavements. Different loading conditions were examined varying the geometry of the blocks, and the magnitude of the vert...

Changes in weather patterns directly impact urban transport infrastructures. The increase in temperature and the ongoing precipitation changes should be handled and managed more frequently. In urban areas, most of the soil is impermeable and water hardly infiltrates into the subsoil. Permeable pavement is a technology that helps mitigate the effect...

This paper compared two approaches used to analyze a modular pedestrian pavement made of hexagonal basalt pavers. In presence of occasional heavy traffic roads, the pavement should be verified using methods currently used for road pavements. Different loading conditions were examined varying the geometry of the blocks, and the magnitude of the vert...

Tunnel lighting represents a major cost item for road managers, and particularly in Italy owing to its specific geomorphological and orographic features. In 2018, ANAS, the Italian government-owned road company launched an ambitious program to rehabilitate the lighting systems of more than 700 tunnel tubes across Italy. The Greenlight plan aims to...

In urban areas traffic-calming strategies and pedestrian friendly measures are often adopted to reduce the adverse impacts of motor vehicles on vulnerable users. This study surveyed 24 raised pedestrian crossings (RPCs) to examine their geometrical and functional characteristics. Geometric characteristics, location, administrative and effective veh...

Airport pavements should satisfy safe and regular aircraft operations; thus, it is necessary to monitor these surfaces and implement expensive maintenance and rehabilitation works. The Airport Pavement Management System (APMS) is an approach to monitor the pavement condition and to determine the priorities for intervention, to plan, and to allocate...

The road safety of vulnerable users is a current issue; in densely populated areas, the use of alternative and light mobility vehicles is growing in popularity, and their users conflict with vehicles having larger dimensions and masses. This study focuses on the risk analysis of collision between bicyclists and motorized vehicles in urban intersect...

Although the construction of block pavements has grown fast in the last decades, there is still a need for simple tools that could be applied to design them. This paper analyzed and verified concrete block pavements for urban and local roads composed of rectangular concrete pavers with plane side surfaces (no interlocking effect). The examined bloc...

This paper analysed and verified an existing block stone pavement in an urban shared area. Fatigue and rutting verification was performed respectively for bound and unbound pavement materials using analytical curves available in the literature. The commercial finite element (FE) software Abaqus® was used to calculate the response of the pavement wh...

A port is an intermodal system in which many logistics activities requiring properly constructed areas occur. The large extension of these areas poses a major problem in choosing materials with technical and economic implications. Choice and design of pavements are directly related to the port handling systems and procedures for the disposal of the...

The attention to the most vulnerable road users has grown rapidly in recent decades. The experience gained reveals an important number of cyclist fatalities due to road crashes; most of which occur at intersections. In this study, dispersion of trajectories in urban intersections has been considered to identify the whole conflict area and the large...

Both the construction and use of roads have a range of environmental impacts; therefore, it is important to assess the sources of their burdens to adopt correct mitigation policies. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a useful method to obtain demonstrable, accurate and non-misleading information for decision-making experts. The study presents a “cradle t...

Attention to the most vulnerable road users has grown rapidly over recent decades. The experience gained reveals an important number of fatalities due to accidents in urban branch roads. In this study, an analytical methodology for the calculation of urban branch road safety is proposed. The proposal relies on data collected during road safety insp...

This work calculates and discusses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of four scenarios composed of two types of road pavements and two types of lighting systems to be built in an Italian twin-tube road tunnel. A 20-year time horizon is adopted to assess the burdens of construction and maintenance of both flexible and rigid pavements and high-pressure...

Transport infrastructures are lifelines: They provide transportation of people and goods, in ordinary and emergency conditions, thus they should be resilient to increasing natural disasters and hazards. This work presents several technologies adopted around the world to adapt and defend transport infrastructures against effects of climate change. T...

In Europe, the attention to efficiency and safety of international railway freight transport has grown in recent years and this has drawn attention to the importance of verifying the clearance between vehicle and lining, mostly when different and variable rolling stock types are expected. This work consists of defining an innovative methodology, wi...

Most road accidents occur in urban areas and notably at urban intersections, where cyclists and motorcyclists are the most vulnerable. In the last few years, cycling mobility has been growing; therefore, bike infrastructures should be designed to encourage this type of mobility and reduce motorized and/or private transport. The paper presents a stu...

The attention to road safety-related issues has grown fast in recent decades. The experience gained with these themes reveals the importance of considering these aspects in the resource allocation process for roadside and guardrail improvement, which is a complex process often involves conflicting objectives. This work consists on defining an innov...

The attention to airport safety-related issues has grown fast in recent decades. The experience gained in these themes reveals the importance of assessing and mitigating the accident risk in the airport context. This work presents a quantitative risk assessment method useful to calculate the current level of risk for different runway codes and type...

This paper analysed and verified an existing block stone pavement in an urban shared area. Fatigue and rutting verification was performed respectively for bound and unbound pavement materials using analytical curves available in the literature. The commercial finite element (FE) software Abaqus® was used to calculate the response of the pavement wh...

This two-part paper presents a comprehensive methodology for lighting calculation of a road pre-tunnel. The adequate lighting of road tunnels, especially in their entrance zone during the day-time hours, is a very important factor to maintain road safety and to ensure a good level of service. These targets are commonly achieved by means of artifici...

This two-part paper presents a comprehensive methodology for lighting calculation of a road pre-tunnel. The adequate lighting of road tunnels, especially in their entrance zone during the day-time hours, is a very important factor to maintain road safety and to ensure a good level of service. These targets are commonly achieved by means of artifici...

This work presents the results of the overall design of the first Italian roundabout with jointed plain concrete pavement. The examined case study complies with current international standards and practices for geometry of roundabouts and road pavements. The construction of a concrete pavement in an urban roundabout will better manage and slow down...

The attention to rapid pavement repair has grown fast in recent decades: this topic is strategic for the airport management process for civil purposes and peacekeeping missions. This work presents the results of laboratory and on-site tests for rapid runway repair, in order to analyse and compare technical and mechanical performances of 12 differen...

This work presents the results of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of two different types of road cross-sections (i.e. embankment and trench sections) with the objective of calculating and analysing the environmental and human health impact related to their construction processes. The geometrical and technical characteristics of the examined section...