The Civil Aviation Authority of Macao SAR (AACM) will host a three-day workshop on airport pavements design and evaluation commencing today (2 November 2011) to share experiences and enhance each other's knowledge and capability in this technical aspect, with the aeronautical authorities and airports from the United States and Asia, international organizations and expert service providers The airport runway technologies are constantly changing. To ensure that the aeronautical authorities and the airports can obtain the latest development of the runway design, construction and engineering technologies, AACM and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) collaborated with each other to host the "Regional Workshop on Airport Pavements – Design and Evaluation" in Macao with the objective of allowing participants to share experiences through discussions and case studies to effectively deal with airport pavement problems. The workshop is held in the convention facilities of Macao Science Centre, from 02 to 04 November 2011. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States is the main speaker. In the three-day event, the speakers and the participants will discuss airfield pavement design, construction, maintenance and management; runway surface friction characteristics, evenness and roughness; pavement load classification; major research initiatives on pavement design for heavy aircraft; state practices on overload operations and environmental constraints; new pavement software and technologies development and so on. FAA will also illustrate some case studies, including construction problems at Trinidad and Tobago Airport, and field instrumentation at John F. Kennedy International Airport. In addition, the workshop will highlight a number of state or administration presentations. Hong Kong SAR and Republic of Korea will present the pavement management at Hong Kong International Airport and Incheon International Airport respectively; Japan will report on the damage to Sendai Airport and its pavement from the tsunami; Myanmar will introduce their airport pavement design and evaluation; Macao SAR will talk about the evaluation of structural capacity of airfield pavements in Macau International Airport. The workshop has attracted more than 70 participants who come from 14 states or administrations namely Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the United States, as well as ICAO and its subsidiary – "Cooperative Operational Safety and Continuing Airworthiness Programme – South Asia", and two international expert service providers in airport pavement testing and evaluation. The Macao SAR participants also comprise Civil Engineering Laboratory of Macau, CAM-Macau International Airport Company Ltd. and Administration of Airports, Ltd. To cope with the integration of Macao into the Pearl River Delta Region, Macau International Airport will undergo gradual expansion so that its capacity can fulfill the future demand of air transport in the neighbouring area. The expansion will include the reclamation of the shallow water area between the two taxiways and the extension of the safety area of both runway ends. The President of AACM, Chan Weng Hong, said "The workshop is hosted in a timely manner in Macao as it provides a platform for the Macao participants to exchange the latest development trends on runway and pavement design and evaluation and understand how other states or administrations deal with the respective construction problems."
