It is my proud privilege to present the CRRI Annual Report 2009-10 on CSIR Foundation Day. The main R & D inputs during the year continued to

be in the area of Traffic and Transportation Planning; Road Safety and Environment; Road Development Planning and Management; Geotechnical aspect related to Landslide, Slope Stability, Ground Improvements; Construction Techniques and Evaluation of Materials and Mixes for Rigid and Flexible Pavements; Bridge Design, Evaluation & Rehabilitation and Software Developments.

The Institute handled about thirty sponsored research projects during the year including Development of a Management System for Maintenance Planning and Budgeting for High Speed Corridors, which would be capable of estimating the budget requirements and allocation of funds within constrained budgets for pavement maintenance. A Comprehensive Study on GIS based Highways Information System and Database for National Highways, sponsored by Ministry of Road Transport and Highway was taken up which involves the development of Highways information system in GIS environment and collection and collation of the highways related information from primary as well as secondary sources in the system.

CRRI has successfully implemented its tenth five year plan project on New and Improved Road Technologies. The study has culminated into development of a number of technologies such as Use of Waste Plastic, Ultra Thin

White Topping, Development of Specifications for Indian Roads Congress and Bureau of Indian Standards. The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has recently assigned CRRI a major study to create National Test Facility for Testing of Expansion Joints.

For North-Eastern Region, efforts are being made to develop appropriate technologies for its overall growth. CRRI is putting its efforts as a focused area for the region and is showing its presence in the region in collaboration with NEIST Jorhat as CRRI Node.

During the year, the Institute has added some major laboratory infrastructures viz. State-of–the-art facilities for offering scientific services include; Network Surveys Vehicle System, Roughometer II, Walking Profiler, Car Driving Simulator, Fuel Flow Detector For Petrol, Water Chemistry Laboratory and Auto Sampler along with SUMMA Canisters. The Institute has commissioned a National facility-Accelerated Pavement Testing Facility which is unique in south-east Asia. It is a facility with which long term pavement performance of pavements could be predicted in a very short duration i.e., say 3-6 months as compared to 10-20 years needed under normal traffic conditions.

The Institute had the honour to organize National Get – together on Road Research and its Utilization (NGT 2010), which was inaugurated by Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari, DG CSIR and Secretary DSIR. During NGT 2010, various issues related to road development were discussed by the professionals and experts and come out with appropriate recommendation on thrust areas of research and application of research findings in the field of Road and Road Transportation.

In its endeavor for effective technology transfer and building a close linkage with user organizations, the Institute handed a large number of consultancy assignments and earned a sizeable cash resource. The Institute also continued with its year round activities of conducting refresher course / training programme in the field of highway and bridge engineering, traffic, engineering, quality control, construction techniques and other related aspects. An International training

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course on Highway Management and Development (HDM-4) was also organized. In addition, several customized training programmes were also organized on planning, design, construction and maintenance aspects of flexible pavement / rigid pavement etc. for the engineers of IRCON; R & B, Govt. of Gujarat, Gandhi Nagar; HSAMB, Haryana and Govt. of Karnataka.

Under HRD Programme of the Institute, many scientists have been deputed for studies to acquire higher academic qualification. Besides, Staff members were deputed to receive training in the area of their expertise to cope up with the challenging assignments. Further, thirty nine students (B.Tech, M.Tech, MCA) from different academic Institutions / Universities were provided guidance and training for accomplishing their summer project / training and thesis / dissertation works etc.

In collaboration with CBRI, CRRI is jointly offering two year PG Research Course on Engineering of Infrastructure and Disaster Mitigation in different areas of cutting edge technologies. The programme is designed to give in–depth exposure and hands on R & D experience to the Young Engineering Graduates to groom them as Future Technology Leaders.

CRRI has identified and launched three major areas to focus the efforts in consolidated manners. These are ‘Save the Aggregate’, ‘Reduce the Traffic Congestion’ and ‘Road Safety’. Initiatives have been taken as Corporate Technological Responsibility initiatives reflecting our commitment to the professions.

I wish to gratefully acknowledge the support and cooperation of all my staff, CSIR, Members of Research and Management Councils of this laboratory, for their valuable assistance and advice.