NAPA Airfield Pavement Technologies

About this study

This study, Advanced Technologies for Airfield Pavement Projects, was sponsored by the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) through the Airport Asphalt Pavement Technology Program (AAPTP), a cooperative agreement effort between NAPA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The study synthesizes current and emerging technologies with the potential to enhance how airfield pavements are designed, built, and maintained, and sets out a practical path for their adoption.

The work followed a three-phase methodology:

• Discovery. Automated web-scraping across more than 30 public repositories and conference databases assembled 10,677 article titles and abstracts, classified into 9 technology families, yielding an initial 97 candidate technologies. Drawing on this evidence together with a project panel survey, a national and international industry survey, and expert focus groups, the list was refined to the 51 technologies carried forward for detailed evaluation.
• Evaluation. Each of the 51 technologies was characterized through a structured, AI-assisted literature review spanning about 3,469 full-text publications (averaging roughly 68 per technology), then scored across impact and feasibility dimensions, combining the published evidence with expert stakeholder judgment.
• Recommendations. Technologies were placed on an Impact-Feasibility matrix and analyzed against the industry's most pressing gaps, producing prioritized findings, strategic insights, and a phased, ten-year implementation roadmap.

You can access the report on the website: go.asphaltpavement.org/air-011.

Ask a question below to explore the findings, methodology, technology ratings, gap analysis, or roadmap. Every answer is drawn strictly from the Final Report and its Appendices.