January 12, 2012

ANNUAL MEETING

It is less than two weeks from the 2012 TRB Annual Meeting taking place January 22-26, 2012 in Washington, DC.  To view the registration and information brochure, click the following link:   http://www.trb.org/AnnualMeeting2012/AM2012Program.aspx

The following is our schedule of meetings, workshops and sessions our Committee is sponsoring or co-sponsoring:

A complete Activity Matrix for the Environment & Energy Section is also attached.

I will be pulling together items for our business meeting agenda this week so let me know if there are issues you would like to be discussed.  If you are Friend of the Committee, we hope that you will attend the Business Meeting - we greatly value your input and ideas! 

2012 Committee Summer Workshop

Our Committee’s next Summer Workshop will be held July 10-14 in Madison Wisconsin and is to be hosted by the University of Wisconsin Recycled Materials Resource Center (with the outstanding efforts of new member Tuncer Edil).  The theme of this year’s Workshop is “Sustainable Resource Management in Transportation” and we are hoping to match or exceed the number of participants (100!) at our 2011 Summer Workshop in Portland, Oregon.  The official call for presentations and other information should be available online later this week at http://www.trb-adc60.org/.   Please consider signing up to make a presentation – it is an excellent way to share your environmental expertise and experiences as well as to pursue an option to later prepare it for submission in August as a candidate paper to be peer reviewed and formally published by TRB in association with that year’s TRB Annual Meeting.

Research Needs Statements

Research Needs Statements (RNSs) are the committee’s means for identifying important topics or issues related to our interest areas and for carrying those topics through TRB’s RNS database and to hopefully be picked up for funding.   This is an important function of our Committee.  During the 2012 Summer Workshop, the Committee – with great assistance from new member Art Hirsch - identified 11 candidate topics for Research Needs Statements.  At least two of those statements are nearing completion and will be discussed at the Committee Business Meeting at the Annual Meeting.  If you were “tasked” to develop a RNS please be prepared to give a brief status update.   If you have other ideas, please come to the Committee Business Meeting and share – this is not limited to just Members!  If you need help in drafting a statement see the following link:

http://www.trb.org/ResearchFunding/AppendixAWritingaResearchStatement.aspx

New Members for 2011 and Rotation

2011 was a very successful year in adding new members to our Committee.  Please welcome new Committee Members Art Hirsch of TerraLogics Sustainable Solutions; Tuncer Edil, P.E. PhD of University of Wisconsin – Madison; Denise Ferguson - Counsel to the Maryland Department of Transportation, Andy Alden, P.E. of Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, John Schert of the William W. Hinkley Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management (at the University of Florida), and “Babu” Babusukamar of Weston Solutions, Inc. who all joined the committee in 2011.  Each of these new members have already been very active in contributing to the Committee’s mission and we are very pleased to have them on board.  

Unfortunately though, TRB rules dictate that we must rotate off 1/3 of the Committee every 3 years and April is our next rotation event; this is never an easy process.   Nevertheless, we have identified two new candidates that will be announced in early Spring and will need to fill a few additional slots. We are always looking for new “International” members and also for one additional “Young” (under 35) member and so if you are a “Friend” or know someone who would like to be considered for these slots, please let us know.   

Published Papers

Congratulations to Committee Member Dr. Tuncer Edil and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin for their paper “Evaluation of Variable Affecting Sustainable Highway Design with BE²ST-in-Highways Systems”  which was recently published in the TRB Transportation Research Record – Environment 2011.  Their paper can be accessed at: http://trb.metapress.com/content/r37730300l468822/.  Thank you also to the members of the Committee that contributed to the paper review.

Safe travels to D.C. and if you can’t attend that meeting, we very much hope to see you in Madison in July!

Ed Wallingford, Chair
TRB Committee on Waste Management and Resource Efficiency in Transporation (ADC60)
Virginia Department of Transportation
E.Wallingford@VDOT.virginia.gov
804/371-6824, 804/840-7190 (c)