The EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy (SSMS), which translates this overall transport target into actions, states that infrastructure must be adapted to climate change and made resilient to disasters. In line with the SSMS, it is also important that such infrastructure should rely on clean and decarbonised energy sources, notably renewable energy, as well as on a modernised grid.

Research in this topic should provide knowledge and technical solutions to a triple challenge:

1. limiting emissions of transport infrastructures;
2. making them more resilient to climate change; and
3. addressing environmental and biodiversity aspects.

Projects should cover the entire life cycle of transport infrastructures, covering overall emissions from sourcing of materials, construction, maintenance, operation and decommissioning of the infrastructure.

Proposals should address all of the following aspects:

• Development of new methods and techniques to construct, manage, maintain and repair (including self-repair) transport infrastructures, in order to increase climate resilience and lower emissions;
• Assessment of solutions considering the principles of circularity and taking into account the entire life cycle assessment (LCA) approach;
• Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of the solutions considering the entire life cycle of the infrastructure and accompanying business plans for their implementation;
• Application of innovative materials (e.g. green asphalt, green cement, carbon sinks) that enable transport infrastructures to become more resilient, more sustainable and emit less pollutants;
• Validation of all the proposed solutions and proofs of concepts is to be carried out in at least two large-scale demonstrations. The demonstrations should cover at least two different transport infrastructure types (e.g., road, rail, waterborne, airport) which are located on at least two different Trans European Transport Network (TEN-T) corridors. The demonstrations should also cover different environments and phases of the infrastructure life cycle (e.g. design, construction, maintenance, decommissioning);
• Analysis of EU national and international standards in construction, inspection, maintenance and deconstruction, contributing to the decarbonisation and increased resilience of transport infrastructure;
• Design of green, sustainable and innovative public procurement methods, contributing to lowering the environmental footprint, resources, and material consumption;
• Demonstration of sustainable and climate resilient infrastructure with nature-based solutions (NBS), minimising the negative effects on the environment, including the degradation of ecosystems, the fragmentation of habitats and the loss of biodiversity.